I am new to reloading and would like some insight on reloading 300 wby.
-best place to buy brass
-powders and primers that worked best
-how many shots did you get out of the brass
- best bullet weight you have loaded for all around hunting
Any info would be greatly appreciated!
Greg
If you look around a bit you might be able to get the cheapest Weatherby brand Spire point factory loads for around the price of empty brass, and cheaper than Weatherby brass packed in 20 boxes. Try Cabellas. Price takes a huge jump when they are loaded with designer bullets but that's just a great reason to handload.
There's lots of powders that will work, but 7828 is as good as anything. In some freakish co-incidence of a 4 Weatherby chambered rifles I ended up using 7828 in 3 of them. I could cheerfully use 215s in all magnums forever and never feel like I was missing out on anything. A bit of trivia is the 215 was developed for the weatherby cartridges in the first place.
Brass life will be somewhere between 1 shot and forever, with my experience trending more toward the forever side. Norma brass is tough. You can wreck any case the first time out if you're going for the land speed record.
I've settled on 180 grain bullets in all the .300s, almost all of the time. Lighter bullets often don't bring the promised velocities in the first place, and they slow down faster. They do kick less. 200 grainers might get things 20 grains deader but it would be hard to prove. Might shoot better in your gun.
Accuracy on free-bored rifles can be touchy, and if yours doesn't shoot the hottest, VLD, designer, glamour flavor of the day bullet very well don't kill yourself. The cheap factory loads that almost always shoot are Hornadys, Partitions always seem to print with them in factory loads and have been doing it since forever. TSXs are very forgiving of the long jump to the rifling so if you're struggling for a load you would more than likely walk into one there.
