Ammo, it's always the damned ammo...

[Grawfr]

Hey all!

Just wanted to share a little something that happened to me.

I've just got very nice Henry Big Boy Steel in .357Mag, put a Bushnell Legend HS 3-9x40 on it and went to the range to zero in that scope. Smooth action, NICE trigger, comfortable and light, and 10-rounds magazine.

90 rounds later, I was going nuts. The holes were all over the paper, to the tune of 15-20 MOA spreads on 5-rounds groups! I was seriously wondering if the scope was busted, or the rifle was a lemon or what else was wrong. I don't expect 1 MOA from a lever-action carbine shooting a pistol round, but you'd think 3-4 MOA should be quite achievable!

Well, turns out it was the ammo!

The following picture shows eight groups of five rounds shot at 50 yards. All shots were made relatively slowly, with 15-30 seconds between the shots to let the barrel cool down. Ignore the hole in the middle of the left target, that was just me shooting on the wrong paper a bit earlier.

The top four groups (above the hand-drawn arcs) are Winchester White Box 110gr Jacketed Hollow Points. They make normal (for a lever action) 3 to 6 MOA patterns. Point of aim was the diamonds, so I still have a little adjustment tweaking to do on my scope.

The bottom four groups are Winchester Super-X 125gr Jacketed Soft Points, and that's what I had been shooting from the day I got this rifle. The point of aim was the bottom diamond in all cases, and I've drawn black lines linking the holes for easier visualization.

No wonder I was going nuts. Worse thing is, I still have 80 rounds left of that Super-X... Ah well, I wanted their cases for reloading anyhow. I may go all "crazy mad cowboy" at the range next time I go. I didn't have time to try some reloads I made in 125 and 158gr, so there's still lots more experimentation to do!

I need to get some more and different commercial ammo, too... Remington, CCI, Geco, etc...

So the lesson is: when you buy a rifle, get LOTS of different brands/models of ammo, don't get a couple hundred of one type that you won't know will work with your rifle!

 

[Dorian Gray]

That's what you get for scoping a lever gun.

 

[Grawfr]

That's what you get for scoping a lever gun.

LOL! I don't have a choice! With the eyes and the glasses I have, I can use one pair and see a clear target over blurred sights, or use the other pair and see clear sights pointing at some kind of blurred blob over there.

I even had to scope my little .22... though just a 4x fixed power cheapo scope, it works well enough.

 

[CoonT]

.357, how much money do you save by reloading? That's a fairly expensive round to buy by the box, isn't it? Still, I would love to have one though, especially a mare's leg in .357.



Also, when they say "match the rifle to the ammo it likes" does this hold true for all rifles of that model (ie all Henry big boy steel will like 110 whitebox), or do you need to go so far, as to finding what type of ammo your exact rifle likes.

 

[Mulby]

I had some fun sighting in my BB this spring. The target shows the first shot quite centred and low, second shot adjusted one notch on the buck horn, third shot was high above bull, then got it fairly centered and put the remaining 7 in a nice group. This was unsupported from 25 yards with Fed AE 158gr 38spc lrn. The other two were Blazer Brass 125gr and I stopped myself from ruining the group just in time. Lol!


This is 7 shots on a softball sized spinner(bottom)from 50 yards with the same AE 38spc. Again unsupported.


Can't say I'm at all unhappy with this gun. Fun and addictive!

 

[Grawfr]

CoonT, hard to say, I've just started reloading that caliber and the savings will depend a lot on which brand of bullet I end up settling on for most of my use. Just for baseline, here's a calculation:

Winchester White Box was $0.90 a round, Win Super-X was $0.99 a round in boxes of 50. Say $0.95 to get brass I expect to use 10 times, so this particular brass cost me $0.095 per shot.
For steady-state reloading, though, I'll be using something like unfired Starline brass at $26/100, so for a 10-times use comes to $0.026 per shot.

Primers... $40 to $50 for 1000 CCI 550, so say $0.045 per shot

Powder... got H110 at $38.95/lb, assume 18gr avg per shot, that's 389 (say 380) shots per pound, so $0.103 per shot.

Bullets... LOTS of variation. Anywhere from $10.29 for 100 Campro 125gr FCP TC to $38.99 for Hornady 158gr XTP... since I'll shoot lots more cheap bullets than "luxury" bullets, say $15/100 on average for $0.15 per shot.


Total $0.324 per round, so one third of the cost of the average Winchester stuff. If the brass last less than 10 shots, costs goes up. If I switch to 38spl brass or under-load my .357mag to emulate a 38spl, powder costs could drop by another $0.04-0.05 or so.

It's not as cheap to shoot as my Cx4, but still a lot of fun and a better bush gun for carrying on crown lands. I gotta see what happens later if I use lead bullets, too...


Mulby's right... once I find the bullet weight/charge it really likes, this gun is a lot of fun!

(Edit: P.S. Forgot, I also have 800 free Hornady 110gr XTP (JHP) bullets incoming, from their "get loaded" promotion. I am so glad that the Henry seems to like that bullet weight, lol!!)

 

[CanadianBaconPancakes]

My model 70 featherweight was like this. The Higher the grain the worse it shot, The lower the grain the tighter the groups. I got it down to 2 inches with no rest sitting at 100yard after wasting lots of money on ammo, Now I only buy a box at a time.

On a side note the best ammo I have shot is fusion, I can get 1'nch groups with my 6.5 mauser at 100 with a 4x scope. I was blown away the difference ammo makes.

 

[Spawn-Inc]

.357, how much money do you save by reloading? That's a fairly expensive round to buy by the box, isn't it? Still, I would love to have one though, especially a mare's leg in .357.



Also, when they say "match the rifle to the ammo it likes" does this hold true for all rifles of that model (ie all Henry big boy steel will like 110 whitebox), or do you need to go so far, as to finding what type of ammo your exact rifle likes.

Using my cast bullets i average about $8 per box of 50 using a 158gr bullet and 15gr of h110. However that's using my old stock of primers and powder and mostly free lead.

 

[Grawfr]

My model 70 featherweight was like this. The Higher the grain the worse it shot, The lower the grain the tighter the groups. I got it down to 2 inches with no rest sitting at 100yard after wasting lots of money on ammo, Now I only buy a box at a time.

On a side note the best ammo I have shot is fusion, I can get 1'nch groups with my 6.5 mauser at 100 with a 4x scope. I was blown away the difference ammo makes.

I've done some testing on the range a few days ago with 125 and 158gr CamPro FCP TC bullets and 125 and 158gr Hornady XTP bullets, all of them loaded to the middle of the range of powder charge. This was shot on a sunny, hot day but I kept the barrel cool (about 25°C) by waiting 1-2 mins between shots and using a damp cloth as a thermal sleeve/heat sink (the Vickers boys knew what they were doing!).

What I can tell you to date is:

110gr:
Winchester JHP White box typically gave 4 MOA groups of 5 rounds.

125gr:
Winchester Super-X (JSP) gave groups of 5 that were 6 MOA horizontally, but over 15-18 MOA vertically.
CamPro FCP TC were spreading all over the map, more than 15+ MOA in group sizes (no exact measurement, some bullets were lost outside the target altogether)
Hornady XTP (JHP) drove me nuts: after 2 groups of 5 that each spread over 8 MOA vertically, I shot a group of 10 that fit in 2.5 MOA. That one makes no sense at all.

158gr:
CamPro FCP TC gave me 2 groups of 5 rounds @ 4-6 MOA each and 2 other that wandered all over the target.
Hornady XTP (JHP) gave me 2 groups of 10 that each fit in 3 MOA minus one or two flyer per group opening it to 5 MOA.

Right now, I'm thinking I have 2 issues at the same time: the rifle might not like 125g weight bullets, and the uniformity (quality control) of the Campro bullets is suspect. Those bullets are $11-$13 per 100, not the $37-$39 per 100 of the Hornady brand.

I'm going back to shoot today, I'll grab some Remington ammo. I also made more CamPro/Hornady reloads, with the minimum powder load recommended this time. Let's see what happens! I still have some Super-X for validation, too. One thing I'll want to try in the future is lead bullets, also.

Good excuses to shoot more, more, MORE!!!!