300 win ladder testing inconclusive

[Southcountryguy]

That's kinda the problem. I'm sorta married to the 165 loading since I want to handload a practice duplicate load to the hundreds of dollars worth of 165 trophy copper factory stuff I have. I'm also partial to the 165 copper idea and I'm hoping to make it work somehow...

With anything problems always start when you think your married to something. Often best results are found, sometimes remarkably fast, by moving on.

I shot those bullets once when I get home I will look at my load data.

SCG

 

[vpsalin]

I like the advice of jumping up in full powder grain increments instead of 0.3 like I was used to doing. I'm going to have to try that. Thanks

 

[todbartell]

I like 1% of charge weight, so in this 0.8gr steps

 

[Unholysavage]

Did you do an actual ladder test, or did you just shoot for groups at 100-200y?
I don't see any chronograph numbers posted, so I'm guessing this wasn't done past a chrono?

 

[4fifty8]

Got a Remington 798 same Zastava barreled action 300WM grouped fine (re-barreled to 350RM). Barrel twist should be 1:10. Couple other 300WM's all grouped fine same as my current Sako 85 Grey Wolf. IMR 4350, IMR 7828, H1000 & Reloder19 worked well. Possible your scope is buggered.

 

[vpsalin]

So today I started lower on the powder charge spectrum with Ramshot Magnum and climbed in 0.8GR increments as someone had suggested. Groups were no better then the high-end spectrum stuff I shot earlier.

I ended the session with Federal factory 180GR blue box stuff and shot a decent group. 2.25'' inches (4 shots), beating anything I've ever handloaded so far. I recon this at least puts to rest a few issues; scope isn't at fault (?), rifle shoots OK, I might have to drop 165GR idea and explore 180GR bullets next...

 

[4fifty8]

My 300WM Grey Wolf / Leupold 6x groups like this with 130gr TTSX & 180gr TTSX. 1:11 barrel twist rate. Haven't done any fine tuning yet.

https://i.imgur.com/A0pkVQ3.jpg / https://i.imgur.com/AaPFQME.jpg

 

[BigBraz15]

So today I started lower on the powder charge spectrum with Ramshot Magnum and climbed in 0.8GR increments as someone had suggested. Groups were no better then the high-end spectrum stuff I shot earlier.

I ended the session with Federal factory 180GR blue box stuff and shot a decent group. 2.25'' inches (4 shots), beating anything I've ever handloaded so far. I recon this at least puts to rest a few issues; scope isn't at fault (?), rifle shoots OK, I might have to drop 165GR idea and explore 180GR bullets next...

Are the reloads on this target all the same powder weight? I’m confused by your term ladder test and then not mentioning load weight next to each hole in the target.

 

[jethunter]

So today I started lower on the powder charge spectrum with Ramshot Magnum and climbed in 0.8GR increments as someone had suggested. Groups were no better then the high-end spectrum stuff I shot earlier.

I ended the session with Federal factory 180GR blue box stuff and shot a decent group. 2.25'' inches (4 shots), beating anything I've ever handloaded so far. I recon this at least puts to rest a few issues; scope isn't at fault (?), rifle shoots OK, I might have to drop 165GR idea and explore 180GR bullets next...

I don't understand what you're doing. Do you know you're not shooting "groups" in a ladder test?

What is the charge weights on the individual target holes for the reloads? That's important, you can't interpret a ladder test without it. Top 2 "ladder" holes on the target are fairly close, that might be a node but without knowing the charge weights it's useless. You could have something worth exploring further.

2.25" factory ammo group doesn't rule out a scope or mount problem.

 

[vpsalin]

So I followed many of he suggestions in this thread and switched to 180 GR bullets. I achieved one of my best groups ever in the process, for all rifles I've shot combined. To figure out what powder charge my rifle likes I always load 4 bullets with each load and then jump up 0.5GR to the next 4 bullet group with higher charge weight. I load 4 at a time for each charge to account for a flyer.

According to Barnes the max load of Ramshot Magnum powder is 82.3 GR using 180GR bullets. My best group was achieved with 81.8GR of Magnum Ramshot for a group (excluding the flyer) of .375''!! For my testing, I'm using SST bullets to match closely the Barnes 180 TTSX I planned to use hunting eventually. I have yet to test with the Barnes with the same load but I'm definitely onto something for a change !