Care to guess?

[TargetAcquired]

Most puzzling was that I made the cartridges on Lee reloading equipment, and shot them out of a post-64 '94 Winchester, and nothing horrible happened.

Seriously though, I'll be making more of those. I had rolled 25 rounds each of that basic brew, 7, 7.5, and 8 grains. I'll experiment with going a little hotter, maybe in the 9 grain area, just to see how it affects drop, but these are great plinking/target rounds inside 75 yards.

 

[Ganderite]

I have gone as hot as 12 gr of unique. No idea what the limit is, but the trick is to find a load that groups well. Velocity does not much matter for shooting practice.

By shooting lead you can get a lot of good practice, for peanuts.

 

[New Camper]

You don't need a lot of power to practice shooting at 50 yards, punching holes in paper, cans and boards. Cast bullets are cheap, much cheaper than jacketed bullets.

As for "anemic", my grandfather shot about 50 moose (in B.C.) with a 30-30 rifle. Only one required a second shot.

Okay... It always seemed logical to me to practice shooting with a 22LR and I'd never bother with reloading a centerfire intentionally for the purpose of practice shooting "for cheap" - I'm not knocking what someone else likes to do, by all means, no one is being harmed. The subsonic aspect did occur to me, and that could have uses trying to shoot crows, beaver or other vermin when less noise is better.

On the "anemic" point: Again not knocking what others like to use nor the fact that lots of large game have been taken with a 30-30. Given the availability of excellent rounds like the 257 Roberts, 270win, that should a longer shot be necessary will do everything the 30-30 will do, better, and more. Although this may sound contrary to the above paragraph (and arguably so) I like to avoid popularity generally, except to the extent where I would be using rare wildcats.

I don't wish to start a debate about effectivity: Bullet placement is far more important than power - I know people that have needed to shoot moose more than twice with a 300win mag. I have recovered bullets in deer as well, so when I said "anemic" there are more ideal rounds than those underpowered and those overpowered. And while a 22LR bullet put in the right place can kill an elephant, a 416 Rigby would be ideal. First two deer I shot were with a very old (now obsolete) 32-40 winchester-ballard - it had been used to shoot plenty before I did: Although both were one shot kills, this cartridge is only slightly less powerful than the 30-30 but still marginal even for that size of game. This of course is my opinion.