30-30 spire points

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g-manz35

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I've got an old Savage 340A bolt action that I want to refinish and possibly hunt with. Most of the loads for 30-30 are round nose or flat points. Is there any good info on spire points loads? I have in the past substituted bullets of the same weight and loaded them up starting at min loads and working up slowly, but would prefer to have puplished info. Looking for lighter weight 130gr ish loads for cup and core type bullets.

Thanks. George
 
In my opinion the 130 grain 30 calibre bullet is too light to be acurate and/ or efficient in any 30 calibre rifle.
150 grain would be much better.
 
I think Speer made a 130gr bullet and 125gr data should be around .What powder are you playing with? Harold
 
I have great success with a 125 gr TNT Hollow points.

Its one of my most accurate loads in my 30-30 out to 200 yrds I would have no issues taking any game with it. I use the same data as whats in reloading books.

Its also great for yotes out past 200 yrds.
 
redbirddog said:
I have great success with a 125 gr TNT Hollow points.

Its one of my most accurate loads in my 30-30 out to 200 yrds I would have no issues taking any game with it. I use the same data as whats in reloading books.

Its also great for yotes out past 200 yrds.
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I guess I forgot to mention that I will be using open sights as the gun is not tapped for a scope so I'm not looking for anything with long range knock down power. I think the 125 TNT may just be the ticket. I'm thinking it will be for deer 150y and in. never hunted with open sights before so it may be 50y and in:)

Edit: TNT is a varmint bullet so I may go with a Hornady SST 150 or something similar instead.
 
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Nosler makes a 125gr Ballistic Tip

Barnes makes a 130gr TTSX, too.

The TTSX might not fit in the 30-30 case very well. I cut some 30-30 cases down a bit to use the Barnes TSX in my 340 when I had it. Not sure if the TTSX profile is different.

The 125gr BT would be a great deer bullet from a 30-30 I think. You would get about 2500 fps, and the bullet is designed for higher velocities, so should expand well and hold together fine.
 
g-manz35 said:
I guess I forgot to mention that I will be using open sights as the gun is not tapped for a scope so I'm not looking for anything with long range knock down power. I think the 125 TNT may just be the ticket. I'm thinking it will be for deer 150y and in. never hunted with open sights before so it may be 50y and in:)

Edit: TNT is a varmint bullet so I may go with a Hornady SST 150 or something similar instead.
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If you're not worried about long shots then why are you bothering with spire points? Round nose bullets designed for the .30-30 would work perfectly at those ranges. Speer used to make a 170 gr. bullet for the .30-30 that was almost a spitzer shape... just enough of a flat at the nose to be safe with tubular magazines.
 
I used a 340 in .30-30 for a lot of years and found that the Winchester 150g psp had the best profile to fit in the mag, and it expanded great. I tried a lot of lighter bullets and found some that worked very well on paper but I never shot anything bigger than a coyote with them.
 
9.3mauser said:
If you're not worried about long shots then why are you bothering with spire points? Round nose bullets designed for the .30-30 would work perfectly at those ranges. Speer used to make a 170 gr. bullet for the .30-30 that was almost a spitzer shape... just enough of a flat at the nose to be safe with tubular magazines.
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I'm trying to get over some mild feeding issues. I would like a little less recoil. And to a lesser degree I want my buddies to look at my cartridges and say "WTF!". Just something different. Thanks for all the replies. A lot of good info. I think I will check my max COL for the mag and to eject a loaded cartridge. After all it will be mostly about feeding and ejecting. I would also like to see my 30-30 chrono over 2500 FPS. I continued to look at bullets last night and as suggested above I think the 125 Nosler BT may be it. I'll do some more calculating and see what I can come up with.

Thanks George
 
g-manz35 said:
And to a lesser degree I want my buddies to look at my cartridges and say "WTF!"
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Two projectiles that I always get a lot of "wtf?" responses over are round balls (.433" loaded into .44 mag brass) and cast hollow points. I also get a lot of weird looks when people see my spire point .45-70 cast bullets so I get what you mean.

I tried to put regular .308 150gr spire points into .30-30 cases and they wouldn't chamber in my dads rifle (I don't have a .30-30 myself). The bullet went too far forward and just hit the rifling with maybe 1/8" still to go before the bolt would close. Was a Stevens 325 bolt action .30-30. Best spire-ish points I found where the Hornady FTX 160gr .30-30 bullets and they do indeed look kinda funny:
160gr_ftx_1.jpg


Just make sure you don't get the ones for .308 Marlin Express as the picture on the box is the same; you need to go by the product code usually.
 
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