.300 Win Mag "practice load"

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Meph

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So I'm getting my .300 Win Mag pretty much rebuilt by Mystic Precision (good stuff) and I know the .300 wears out barrels pretty quick. Now like many people, I need a lot of practice and I started thinking about an extremely low power, super low temperature and very mild load of the 300 Win for basically practicing at high round count without needing to get the barrel set back and buying a new barrel after. I need load ideas.

I was thinking of going as low power as like... Trail boss. That weak.

Advantages would be: Cheap bullets, longer brass life, virtually no barrel wear, lower recoil, lower shooting cost overall, much more many rounds downrange and much more trigger time.

The biggest advantage is trigger time with the EXACT SAME FIREARM as the one you need to shoot exceptionally. I'm not recoil shy though, this isn't what these loads are for. These loads are the same idea as sticking an Advantage Arms upper on a Glock 17 and the like.
 
As written in the seventh edition Hornady manual

"Reduced loads with slow burning powder can produce dangreous hangfires, large muzzle flashes, and perhaps even dangerously high pressure."


If you consult an up to date reloading manual you will see there is next to zero reduced type practice loads for this cartridge with the exception of some ultra light reduced loads shown in the Speer manual, which produce less than 30-30 speeds.


Get the .22 rimfire out and get good with it, then get yourself a nice mild .223 or 308 to practice with.


The 300 Win Mag is akin to a top fuel dragster, best fed with high octance fuel and ran pretty much flat out. It is not meant for trips to the store, or as a student driver type vehicle.

As for barrel life, well if you keep it cool and clean it properly, you will see plenty of life from your barrel.
 
I use H4895 (40gr) behind a Hornady 150grSP with a WIN LR primer. Hodgdon suggests a 60% load of the max of H4895 for reduced loads. This load in my 300WM is accurate, mild, easy on the barrel and costs nearly half of my regular hunting load. I use the same formula in my 280 for a reduced load as well.
 
Lefty #### said:
As written in the seventh edition Hornady manual

"Reduced loads with slow burning powder can produce dangreous hangfires, large muzzle flashes, and perhaps even dangerously high pressure."


If you consult an up to date reloading manual you will see there is next to zero reduced type practice loads for this cartridge with the exception of some ultra light reduced loads shown in the Speer manual, which produce less than 30-30 speeds.


Get the .22 rimfire out and get good with it, then get yourself a nice mild .223 or 308 to practice with.


The 300 Win Mag is akin to a top fuel dragster, best fed with high octance fuel and ran pretty much flat out. It is not meant for trips to the store, or as a student driver type vehicle.

As for barrel life, well if you keep it cool and clean it properly, you will see plenty of life from your barrel.
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I know that reducing a load too much will be dangerous. Maybe I should have mentioned that I knew that.

Read the post, I said I needed practice WITH THE SPECIFIC FIREARM, not with a .22 or another rifle. They don't feel the same. They don't hold the same. The scopes aren't the same. Weight isn't the same, triggers aren't the same. However, I'll look at the speer loads, thank you for mentioning them!

hunter5425 said:
I use H4895 (40gr) behind a Hornady 150grSP with a WIN LR primer. Hodgdon suggests a 60% load of the max of H4895 for reduced loads. This load in my 300WM is accurate, mild, easy on the barrel and costs nearly half of my regular hunting load. I use the same formula in my 280 for a reduced load as well.
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This is interesting, I'll try it out. Thanks!

zuke said:
Trail Boss powder
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Mentioned it in my original post. I think I'll have the best luck with it, but how would one know how many grains of powder to load it to?


HERE WE GO

150 GR. SIE SP, Trail Boss, 18.0grs, 1302ft/s, 18,400 PSI. From Hodgdon.

Any more loads I could try?
 
IMR also has reduced loads using (numbers may be off so don't quote) 57XX and SR4759 powders.

I much prefer the reduced loads offered on the Hodgdon site. Somewhere around the 2000fps range so you will let the bullet fly as designed and no chance of sticking in the bore.

I am shy on using cast bullet loads for jacketed bullet BUT they would work great for plated ones.

Something like a 110gr for the M1 would be fun.

however, I think full pressures loads will be a better way to practise as you need to learn how to handle the recoil on this rig. Reduced loads a great fun but accuracy is usually a lot lower.

As others have said, if you want to learn basic shooting tech, a rimfire is by far the best way to get this trigger time and these rifles don't have to cost very much.

then you can move to near full pressure loads with the 300WM and then full meal deal.

Enjoy...

Jerry
 
Thanks Jerry, still, If I wanted the proper trigger time, I'd need to build myself a new rifle with the same stock as the one I'm getting now. I'll probably try multiple loads like the lighter grain bullets. I'm used to recoil, and I do follow through properly even when switching from one gun to the other, so the recoil part isn't an issue.

sunray said:
"...practice WITH THE SPECIFIC FIREARM..." You should practice with your hunting load.
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it's a target rifle.
 
16.5 grains of Unique under a 180 grain cast round nose bullet with a gas check on it. Ultra cheap. Ultra low wear on the barrel. Ultra low recoil for a 300 win mag. Ultra low wear on your shoulder. Unique is a very reliable flake powder that goes off without a hitch every single time.

That's my go-to plinking load and bullet for my 300. I've never had one fail to go off, do anything unusal, and this particular load is very accurate in my rifle. I've never checked the velocity, but the felt recoil is very close to my 30-30 lever.

Hope that's what you were looking for.
 
Unique has long been used for reduced rifle loads. Speer makes a 100 grain "plinker" bullet that would be well suited for this sort of thing if you want to use jacketed bullets.

http://www.speer-bullets.com/ballistics/detail.aspx?id=78

Trail Boss would also be a fine choice. I don't think you would be able to overload with it, so long as you aren't compressing it to the point where powder kernels are crushed.
 
See this is what I'm talking about! I'll try them out and see what's working best. Thanks guys, you're all awesome :)

tjhaile said:
Unique has long been used for reduced rifle loads. Speer makes a 100 grain "plinker" bullet that would be well suited for this sort of thing if you want to use jacketed bullets.

http://www.speer-bullets.com/ballistics/detail.aspx?id=78

Trail Boss would also be a fine choice. I don't think you would be able to overload with it, so long as you aren't compressing it to the point where powder kernels are crushed.
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blacksmithden said:
16.5 grains of Unique under a 180 grain cast round nose bullet with a gas check on it. Ultra cheap. Ultra low wear on the barrel. Ultra low recoil for a 300 win mag. Ultra low wear on your shoulder. Unique is a very reliable flake powder that goes off without a hitch every single time.

That's my go-to plinking load and bullet for my 300. I've never had one fail to go off, do anything unusal, and this particular load is very accurate in my rifle. I've never checked the velocity, but the felt recoil is very close to my 30-30 lever.

Hope that's what you were looking for.
Click to expand...
 
Hodgdon website loading data, youth loads. If they list a H4895 load for a specific cartridge, specific bullet weight in that caliber, then 60% of that H4895 load is safe, per Hodgdon. If they do not list H4895 for that catridge/bullet weight combination, then all bets are off.

These make nice, cool practice rounds, the use of which gets you on trigger, and up to speed on the administrative functions of a rifle. Like mounting and firing the rifle from any safe carry, and working the handle such that the rifle is reloaded before the ejected case has hit the ground. All while calling your shot. All much easier to practice with a mild load than with the full recoil of .300. Getting that first round on target quickly is far more important than tweaking an extra gazillionth of an MOA, or a few fps out of a cartridge.
 
Just one last thing. By all means, experiment with lighter bullets and see how you make out. Personally, I've never had much success with really light bullets in my 300. 180gr or 200 gr seem to work very well but I just couldn't get a really accurate load worked out with anything lighter than that for some reason. I don't have a good explaination of why that is......it just is. If you get something worked out that's sub MOA with a really light bullet, I'd be interesting in hearing about it.
 
blacksmithden said:
Just one last thing. By all means, experiment with lighter bullets and see how you make out. Personally, I've never had much success with really light bullets in my 300. 180gr or 200 gr seem to work very well but I just couldn't get a really accurate load worked out with anything lighter than that for some reason. I don't have a good explaination of why that is......it just is. If you get something worked out that's sub MOA with a really light bullet, I'd be interesting in hearing about it.
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Well .300 Win Mags generally have a fast twist of rifling to spin the bullet enough to stabilize it. Heavier bullets need a faster twist, lighter bullets are often overspun, they'll "wobble" due to minute imperfections that really rise up when you spin a bullet too fast. There's always a sweet spot of rifling twist that's a factor of bullet length, diameter and speed when fired.

That's why your rifle worked with a heavier bullet, it's rifling twist rate is likely 1 in 11 or 1 in 10.
 
Alright, I just got my bullets. CS Game Ranger by Frontier, they're 220gr bullets. First, it looks like a large surface of the bullet will contact the bore, will this reduce barrel life even if I'm using Trail Boss? Second, how much trail boss should I use?

 
Why do you keep worrying about barrel life? I would love to shoot a .300 so much I shot out the barrel, because it will take a lot more shooting than you seem to think. And if I ever did shoot one out, I would just get another one and start on that.

Just shoot it.
 
It's a target gun, and you want something other than the target loads to shoot in it?

What's the use in that? IMO, that's right on par with claiming that masturbating is 'practice' for quality time with your sweetheart. You can think it helps, if you want to, but it isn't practice, and it won't help you in the end. Two different things.

Shoot your target loads and work for group. Yer not exactly gonna need the reflex/muscle memory training of a high volume Practical/tactical kind of shooter.

When the barrel wears out, deal with it.

Cheers
Trev
 
When I was still playing with cast loads, my .300 Win reduced practice load was 28 grs of SR4759 with a Lyman pattern that weighed about 185 with my mix. You can shoot that all day and barely get the gun warm.
 
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