Proper bullet/load for a cougar

rogerdogger

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A Voere Cougar, in 308 Norma Magnum, that is. I recently acquired this rifle, very nice rifle, and in an interesting caliber. I plan on shooting 180gr bullets, i've loaded a test batch of sierra's SBT, with H4831. I'll hopefully get out to the range tomorrow to see how it'll perform with these. Would anyone like to offer up their pet loads? Anyone using IMR7828? Nosler partition? Accubonds? Thanks, and have a great day, Dogger
 
Also, it came with a set of Redding dies, 30some odd rounds of loaded ammo, some factory, some reloads, and 40 pieces of brass. I wasn't going to fire someone elses reloads, so i pounded all the loaded ammo apart. Out of them, seven different bullets, and three different powders. Glad i did it. And learned a lesson when i was prepping the brass.Cleaned the primer pockets, uniformed the flash holes, deburred, ran a brush inside the case, and hunks of red walnut media fell out of a few of them. Had to pick and scratch inside quite a few of them to get all that crap out. Inspected the cases, three went straight to the recycle bin, one had a very large extractor groove shaped dent on the base, and two had bad primer pockets. Now, the painful part..... ran one into the sizing die, slowly adjusting to neck size only, great, one done. Ran the 2nd into the die, and pretty much crushed it. It was too long, by quite a margin. Out with the calipers, measured the other 80 or so cases, 37 were too long. I had thought of measuring and trimming after resizing, but now, that will be one more step before sizing. My bad. But this story has a happy ending, trimmed and sized all the others, so now i have a decent stock of brass, that i will go to great pains to keep in good condition.
 
Norma used to use Norma MRP powder for their 180gr factory 308 NM loads.

RL22 is the identical powder as MRP.

I used MRP until it became difficult to find I then used RL22 gave exactly the same performance/accuracy as my MRP loads.

I don't remember the load and don't have time to look it up right now but it was 180gr Norma bullets @ 3060fps in my 26" barreled rifle.
 
You have to work up the load for your rifle. What shoots well out of one won't necessarily do so out of your's.
IMR7828 will likely do well. Sadly, because of the relative oddness of the Norma Mag, there's no IMR data on Hodgdon's site. Just means it wasn't tested. Might be in Hodgdon's current manual.
None for a 180 on Reloader's Nest either, but there is one unverified 200 grain Nosler Partition load there. Guy's claiming 2840 fps and 1/2" groups at 100.
 
I use RE#19 and H4831 data for the 180gr interchangeably in my Browning FN Safari .308 NM @ 72grains .Harold
 
Thanks for the replies 'Nutz. With the powder situation being as grim as it is in my area, Norma and Reloader powders are non-existant. Even premium .308 caliber bullets are quite rare. but i lucked into 2 boxes of 180gr partitions today. I have a decent enough stock of the more common powders, and IMR7828 is a powder listed for the partitions. I realized before purchasing that there wasn't a lot of info online or in manuals about this cartridge. But, now that i have some components, i'll start development on some loads. Thanks again for the info, i'll keep you all posted on my results. Have a great day, Dogger
 
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