.300 Win Mag / 165 Peregrine Plains Master

[PHOENIX PHIL]

So it's November and the weather has finally turned nice in Phoenix. I've been wanting to give these new Peregrine bullets a try for some time now. Peregrine bullets are made in South Africa, but they have at least one U.S. distributor which happens to be just down the road from me. On their website there is an area code 623 number which is a Phoenix area number. A gent named Franco from RSA answered the phone. Franco is here in the Phoenix area for a visit and was happy to talk to me for a few minutes about his bullets. He also told me of a shop here in Chandler were I live that is carrying them. So I picked up a couple of boxes of 165gr Plains Master bullets to give a go in both my .300WM and my .300H&H.

Normally I'm not inclined to post any information early in a load development for a couple reasons. The first is simply I'm not done yet and there usually isn't much to report. But today's results were very promising and I'm quite impressed with this bullet. A classic powder for this somewhat light for caliber bullet is my old friend IMR 4350 which I have several pounds of.

I decided to just load 2 bullets in five weights of powder. Results are as follows:

68gr IMR4350. Bullet printed about 2" low of center.

68.5gr IMR4350 after adjusting scope to hit 2" higher than previous 2 shots. No further adjustments made to scope after this adjustment.

69gr IMR4350, no adjustment to scope.

69.5gr IMR4350, noticeably sharper recoil and spread increasing

70gr IMR4350, again noticeably sharper recoil, looks like we've gone over the cliff.

Point of aim was a red dot on the Shoot-N-C target each time. Once I went over the 69.5gr load, again it seemed to go over a cliff. Along with the recoil indication, other signs of pressure appeared at 69.5gr on the brass. This was more pronounced at 70gr with more shiny portions on the base of the brass as well as cratering on the primer. No sticky bolt, but no doubt approaching pressure limitation.

Having said that up to and including the 69.5gr load, the POI is barely moving. And the group is holding through that powder range. I would have to imagine the sweet spot lies +/- 69gr.

 

[PHOENIX PHIL]

Some other initial impressions/thoughts from first work with this bullet:

1) This bullet I would argue is very much what I'd call a bore rider type. The grooves as well as the portion of the bullet in front and behind those grooves are the same diameter and narrower than the outer bands.

2) The effect of #1 is to reduce the copper bearing surface of the copper, reducing friction and with it pressure. It also reduces the amount of copper scraping against your barrel which should reduce copper fouling. My prelim results confirm this. Whereas with the Barnes bullets I would see very evident copper fouling in just a handful of shots with these Peregrines I'm seeing nothing out of the ordinary in my M70.

3) Another result of #1 is that the bullet must be longer in comparison to the Barnes for equal weight. I have none of the Barnes in 165gr but I've got a few in 180gr. Side by side the Peregrine 165's are just about the same length as a 180gr TTSX. Something to keep in mind with regards to caliber chosen and being able to push one of these fast enough to stabilize the bullet.

4) These Peregrines are made with precision. When seating a bullet to X" of COAL, my observation was that you will get virtually the exact same COAL load after load after load. I would have to believe this precision lends itself to the repeatable accuracy I saw today.

5) Another effect of #1 or possibly confirming #1 is when seating the bullet. The effort in seating the bullet is much less than a normal bullet. To the extreme on some cases it almost felt as if the bullet were seating itself. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I'm not sure, but I would say that the overall neck tension is on the loose side. In and of itself that's not bad, but I do have to believe at this point these rounds should be crimped when using them hunting. I can't see how with the rounds I loaded that rounds down in the magazine that the bullets would not be slammed further into the cases under recoil from rounds being fired above.

Now after having just wrote this, it occurred to me that I read something about this on Peregrine's website. And sure enough if you go to this link you can see for yourself:

http://www.peregrinebullets.com/how-to-correctly-seat-peregrine-bullets/

As you can see from the link I think I have actually two options. Crimping or sizing the die without the expander ball in place. @Kristof Aucamp , I hope you can make a recommendation as to which would be better. I would prefer to crimp my rounds, but will do whichever is considered the better thing to do.

6) At the same link above you'll see to seat the bullet with 3/4 of the first ring exposed. This worked find for my .300WM but did result in a COAL of roughly 3.365" I believe it was. That's a bit longer than SAAMI of 3.34" for the .300WM. Not a problem for my M70. But I also loaded these up for a pre-64 M70 in .300H&H. The magazine for that magazine will not allow for much more than the 3.6" SAAMI length. As such I was at about 3.605". I don't think this will be a problem for that rifle, but time will tell.

I will be working up some more of these .300WM loads this week and shooting next week hopefully, if not then sometime soon. So hopefully will have more info regarding crimping and/or neck sizing then.

 

[PHOENIX PHIL]

As mentioned I also loaded up some of these in .300H&H with starting loads at 65gr of IMR4350 and max of 67gr. The two 65gr loads printed just like the starting loads for the .300WM.

But the 65.5gr load was like going to the 69.5gr in .300WM load above. The recoil picked up noticeably and pressure signs were showing. So I stopped there. More to come on the .300H&H load later.

 

[Bhfs300]

Here is a 300 Win Mag 180 at 200 yds. But it is a factory load. I wish I had the equipment to try to load some shells since I have a lot of brass.

 

[PHOENIX PHIL]

RCBS Rockchucker Kit is fairly inexpensive.

 

[Albert GRANT]

@PHOENIX PHIL I just had a post about using these in a .375 H&H. I was able to recover the bullet from the deer I shot so I can confirm the only part of the bullet touching the barrel is the rings on the bullet. I got perfect expansion and even great accuracy from reduced loads in the .375- specifically for deer. At an estimated 1800 fps it still expanded nicely and got over 3 ft of penetration (deer shot head on) I too found every bullet seated to exactly the same length, but had to bury the last groove in order to fit in the magazine. This did not seem to affect accuracy. I did not bother with crimping or otherwise, but hadn't really thought about it either, so I will measure the rounds that were in the gun to see if anything changed. So far I am super impressed with these bullets and plan on only using them in the .375. Kristof is also extremely helpful, and always responds to my emails

 

[Buckdog]

good luck in your endeavor but I must ask why 165gr?? that is not the ideal bullet wt for 300 mags. get some 180 or 200 gr go with H1000 or RL22 for 300 win mag. just my 2cents worth.

 

[PHOENIX PHIL]

good luck in your endeavor but I must ask why 165gr?? that is not the ideal bullet wt for 300 mags. get some 180 or 200 gr go with H1000 or RL22 for 300 win mag. just my 2cents worth.

A few reasons:

1) I'd like to give these a go in my wife's .30-06.

2) These bullets are long. As mentioned they are about as long as a 180gr TTSX. The TTSX's are also long in comparison to a lead bullet. One needs to consider this in regards to bullet stabilization. See comment 1 above.

3) After having worked and hunted with the newer high weight retaining bullets, I'm leaning towards one of the advantages being that you can go down at least one bullet weight. I.e. a 180gr bullet that maintains it's weight will perform equal to or even better than a 200gr bullet which sheds 40-50% of it's weight. So a 200gr bullet in my .300WM amongst this variety I think may just be more, not necessarily better. It certainly doesn't harm anything, but I'm not sure it helps. So why not lessen the recoil? One caveat would be eland, heavier I think there can have its advantages. For anything smaller than eland, I'm not so sure.

4) Leopard. From what I've seen/read/heard the cats tend to be susceptible to the shock of a lighter weight but faster moving bullet. A 165gr, accurate and high weight retaining bullet out of a .300WM would seem to be the cat's last meow.

If these rounds work out as I'm guessing they will, I'll likely give the 180's a go too. Never hurts to have options! I cannot see going to the 200gr version however, that bullet is really long. My .300WM may be able to push it fast enough to stabilize, but it's going to be on the edge. And I'm not sure really what I'd be giving up by using the 180's over them.

 

[Bullthrower338]

Got back from south Texas today and my peregrine bullets were sitting on my desk. They say you never get a second chance at a first impression, these bullets make a fine impression! I got home and randomly pulled some of the plainsmaster VG4's from their box. I weighted ten bullets and got 9 that hit dead on 180 gr and one that flickered between 179.9 and 180. I can't wait for the brass to get here!

 

[PeteG]

I'm going to be trying some 180gr in my 300wm, i hope they work out well

 

[PHOENIX PHIL]

I did some shooting on Friday. The loads were built where after full length resizing, I took the decapping pin / expander ball out and ran the brass back through to resize the neck. This seemed to have an impact on where the most accurate round will be powder wise. Still showing promise, but I shot a more narrow range of powder. So more work to do.

 

[Ridgewalker]

OK you have me trying to find Peregrine bullets. No luck on searches.
Please give me a website, or info where I can order some to play with.
Thanks!

 

[PHOENIX PHIL]

OK you have me trying to find Peregrine bullets. No luck on searches.
Please give me a website, or info where I can order some to play with.
Thanks!

I would first try: www.peregrinebullets.com


You can also try these guys, they're near where I live and where I got mine in the shop. Not sure if they'll do mail order or not: http://gunsetc.com/

 

[Bullthrower338]

http://www.peregrinebullets.com/rifle-reloading-bullets/

 

[Ridgewalker]

Thanks guys!

 

[Ridgewalker]

I did not realize Peregrines website was for US customers and they keep stock here. Duh!

 

[PHOENIX PHIL]

So the second time to the range with these bullets didn't go that great. Following the advice I got from Peregrine, I FL resized brass with the expander ball in place to ensure the neck was rounded out properly. After this was done I removed the decaying pin / expander ball from the resizing die and ran the brass back thru a 2nd time.

I measured the inside diameter on several of these cases. It had a fair amount of variation that concerned me and rightfully so I believe. The inside diameters ran from about .301" to .305". Keep in mind that the intent was that by doing this, proper neck tension would be obtained by virtue of expanding the necks with the bullet.

While seating bullets there was of course varying degrees of resistance which I was concerned would result in variation in group size when shooting. I was right. There were flyers at each 3 shot group that would bust the group size.

I attribute this to using brass which has been shot previously and reloaded who knows how many times. I just can't bring myself to keep track of the number shots used on any given piece of brass for the number of calibers I shoot. I'm sure a bad habit, but so it is. Whatever the case due to the variance in how many times the brass has been worked there is variance in how hard / soft the brass is and ability to be consistently sized.

So this week I worked with only brand new brass. All of that brass should behave the same. I ran the same process basically. New brass certainly doesn't need to be sized, but the expander ball should be pushed thru to ensure roundness. I then again ran each pieced without the decaying pin/expander ball in place. This time the inside diameter of the necks was much more consistent. The diameters varied from .299" to .300". All 30 pieces.

The bullets were seated to 3.36". The first group using 67gr of IMR 4350 was okay, but every group after that was quite good. These groups were at 67.5, 68, 68.5 and 69 grains of IMR4350.

A few pics, not sure now which group is which to the above loads listed.

Edit: Okay I went back to my notes and figured this out.

68gr IMR 4350

68.5gr IMR 4350

69gr IMR 4350

 

[Ridgewalker]

PP, just measuring off the screen, it appears the 69gr load is the best. Did you chrono these loads? Any pressure signs?

I got my Peregrine bullets in. Had to go with the 230 375 cal Plains Masters. They didn't have the 250. The 250 Barnes shoot consistently into 1/2" in my MRC 375, so that is what I hoped to compare too. But 230 Peregrines will give me something to play with.

 

[PHOENIX PHIL]

PP, just measuring off the screen, it appears the 69gr load is the best. Did you chrono these loads? Any pressure signs?

I got my Peregrine bullets in. Had to go with the 230 375 cal Plains Masters. They didn't have the 250. The 250 Barnes shoot consistently into 1/2" in my MRC 375, so that is what I hoped to compare too. But 230 Peregrines will give me something to play with.

No on the chrono. I typically use the chronograph once I've got centered in on the load that is shooting accurately. Chronograph work will be next. Yep the 69gr load looked best, but it was a fairly windy day yesterday. So hard to say absolutely.

I think what can be taken away is that this bullet is what I'd call forgiving. By that I mean if I chose a load somewhere between 68.5 and 69gr, any error in powder measure will likely not be noticed as both groups at 68.5 and 69gr are good.

The other thing I feel is of note again is that I have NOT cleaned this barrel in a couple years. There has to be some 50 rounds or more of these Peregrines through this barrel now and accuracy has not dropped off and I don't see the copper buildup like I'd see with the Barnes.

I also ran some 180gr versions of these yesterday. Best group was at 66gr of IMR4350 and shows promise just like the 165s. More to come on this in a different thread.

 

[PHOENIX PHIL]

@Ridgewalker, the next time I'm at the local shop that carry these, I'll take a look for the 250s in .375. If they have them, will be happy to pick some up and send them to you.