Reduced load for .303 British

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crusoe

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I'm developing a much reduced load for .303 British, and would welcome any advice or experience from others who have done the same.

My requirement is to create a round with considerably reduced noise that will still be effective for killing coyotes up to a range of about 120 yards - about the maximum line of sight on my forested property - and be a good round for target shooting up to about 90 yards.

Following several suggestions, I've just loaded 20 gr of IMR-4759 behind a Sierra 150 gr .312 Spitzer. A quick shoot of 5 rounds at 40 yards from my No 4 Mk 2 produced a good 2 inch group and a flat trajectory so this may be what I want, though I might try 22 or 25 grains. I haven't chronographed it yet but will do so.

I shoot a Lee-Enfield 1943 Ishapore No 1 Mk III*, a 1943 Long Branch No 4 Mk 1* and a 1953 No 4 Mk 2, all of which are very accurate rifles with factory strength loads.

Thanks!
 
Lee Precision makes a nice little mould (double cavity, too!) for a bullet which approximates the old Gallery Practice Ball slug: just over 100 grains, round nose, flat base. You can cast them out of wheelweights for about 12 cents a hundred and they work fine ahead of 8 or 10 grains of Unique. This should come close to the old Army loading for indoor target shooting: roughly sonic level, not too loud at all.

Hope this helps.
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Couple thoughts... a) take the bullet and powder out of 7.62x39 and load it into your 303. Plenty of people do this and "should" always be safe as the case is larger.
b) Trailboss is your friend. Fill the case to 70% full or so and slap any bullet you wish on top. Lighter ones go faster or so I hear. Nice and quiet.
 
A load I have had success with is a steel core FMJ .310" bullet pulled from Sellior and Bellot surplus 7.62 x 39 mm and loaded into .303 brass with 14.7 grains of Trail Boss powder and s CCI200 primer. Overall length is 2.890. Since I pull some of the bullets from the surplus 7.62 x 39 and replace them with soft points, the stell core FMJ bullets are essentailly free anyways, and this bullet loaded into the .303 British shoots quite well and is very mild. In my No4 Mk1 Lee Enfield, it shoots to POA with the battle sight set at 400 yards. Hope this helps.

Cheers

Dan
 
Thanks very much!

I began experimenting with Unique a few months ago, because I use it for my Webley reloads and had some lying around. I put about 8 gr behind a Hornady 312 or 315 roundball, just pressed into the top of an unsized case. This can be a nuisance, as you can easily press too far and lose the ball in the case, and I realised that the safest route was to narrow the mouth of the case so there was no chance of that happening on chambering the round. It looks as if the ball will fall off the narrowed mouth, but press hard enough and it will stay. These rounds will not feed from the magazine. They produced tolerable accuracy - about three inch groups at 40 yds - and I'm sure would kill small game, but were not really what I was looking for. (But the cast bullet Smellie suggests would allow a properly seated bullet, and take away some of the uncertainty of these rounds falling apart!).

Unique is messy in a rifle I find - verging on black powder mess. It makes you realise that those early smokeless powders (Unique being similar to those) did not represent such a huge transition in cleaning effort for those soldiers who experienced the first smokeless cartridges with the Lee Metford, though of course the smokeless did not have the hydrophilic properties of BP residue.

Trailboss is a good option and I'll have a go with that if I'm not satisfied with 4759. Thanks for the advice.
 
if your going to go to the work of pulling bullets from 7.62x39, why not use the powder aswell? ive done this, and know lots who do aswell. powder and bullet from the 39 in a WW case will give decent acuracy and 2100 fps over the crony
 
I cast wheelweights into the RCBS 30-180gr-FN and SP molds and size them through a .311 sizer.
I load 23.0 to 24.0 grains of IMR 4198 and get about 1800fps.
I tried the lighter Unique and Red Dot recipes (for 1200-1500fps range) and accuracy was dismal.
 
"...with considerably reduced noise..." A cast bullet load will help, but you'll still have to know exactly where a cast bullet ends up.
 
Beater said:
if your going to go to the work of pulling bullets from 7.62x39, why not use the powder aswell? ive done this, and know lots who do aswell. powder and bullet from the 39 in a WW case will give decent acuracy and 2100 fps over the crony
Click to expand...

that sounds like a great way to utilize cheap surplus x39 ammo

I may have to look into this
 
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