338-06 Loaders

Fryeguy said:

It is a process where you are getting shoulder in correct position when you are taking a casing and altering it in any way into another cartridge. In this case it’s just necking up 30-06 brass to 338-06. Sometimes shoulder might not be 100% to your particular chamber. Normally you could just seat your bullets just slightly into the lands so the bolt face is without a doubt on case and cannot shift forward if the shoulder of your case isn’t close enough to the shoulder in chamber ( headspace can vary). Then when firing pin hits primer case expands, shoulder is blown out to match chamber etc. going from a 30-06 to 336-06 probably isn’t a big deal doing this. But with ackley chamber or fireforming a 220 Russian into a 6ppc, it may take 2 firings to get it 100% blown out.
I would probably shoot all the rounds at least once before hunting with them. Below is why.

I have a 9.3x62 and decided I would buy some cheap hornady brass to hunt with locally on deer etc. then if I lose them who cares. Well I had a round not go off one morning shooting at a doe. I dropped firing pin 2x on same case and nothing. Chambered another round and killed the doe. Called a friend and he told me to check headspace/shoulder. I also fired the rest of the ammo and 3-5 wouldn’t fire. All of those when we checked the shoulders were set back really far, so when the firing pin hits primer primer, case just scooted forward enough and not enough tension back to set off primers. I pulled them down, new primers from same sleeve of primers, same powder right back in it, seated bullets to hit lands and they fired perfectly. Those cases had very round shoulders and after firing you could see the difference. It was apparently a known problem others had with hornady brass I just didn’t know until my buddy told me. That would have sucked if it had been a kudu, or a big buck, etc.

I hope this all makes sense, if it does not, send a PM and we can just talk on phone. Sorry for rambling.
P.S.
shoot the brass before hunting

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Linkerman said:

Stroke of luck this morning. I went into a local small gun shop and found (1) 1 pound can of Reloader 15 and (1) 5-pound keg of Reloader 15, needless to say I picked up both!! So here will be my test loads starting at minimum and working up.

Barnes TSX 210 grain with 50 grains Reloader 15
Barnes TSX FB 225 grain with 48 grains Reloader 15
Nosler Partition 210 grain with 49.5 grains Reloader 15
Bosler Partition 225 grains with 46.5Reloader 15

Any real-world experience on plains game with any of these load combinations?

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fourfive8 said:

All chambers vary and full pressure firing stretches cases. Be sure to trim after each cycle to about .010” shorter that chamber.

Varget powder, 225 gr TSX with a muzzle vel of about 2500-2525 fps is a very effective hunting load in the 338-06. Accurate with relatively low two digit SD (mine averages about 11 fps). Varget is temperature insensitive and in general burn range of 4064, 4895, 4320 and Rel 12&15.

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fourfive8 said:

Plains game real world experience with 338-06, Varget, 225 gr TSX load at about 2500+ fps as I described? Plenty. Waterbuck, impala, hartebeest, kudu, oryx, wildebeest. Rifle is Winchester M70 with 24” Krieger barrel, 10” twist. Of the bullets recovered, all showed near perfect petal formation and 95-100% weight retention.

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Bob Nelson 35Whelen said:

@fourfive8
And here's silly me thinking the tsx were good penetrators but you managed to recover them.
The 225gn Woodleigh RNSP that Rick shot his sable with out of his 358 wasn't recovered. He was annoyed that he couldn't recover a bullet out of any animal because of complete penetration.
Bob

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fourfive8 said:

Oh yah, the TSXs do penetrate! But I’ve been able to recover a couple of them, but only two recovered out of several animals. Both large adults, one a kudu and one a wildebeest.

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