This installment of the series will conclude with what was going on at my reloading bench and the final payoff.

In looking back on what I have shared so far, getting the right mindset and stopping all the wrong headedness is what allowed me to escape Planet 4 MOA. All the rest was either window dressing or confidence building. Along the way, I found most of my rifles shot better groups than I expected. The least of the concerns was what I was feeding these rifles.

A Word on Factory Ammo

Before I discuss reloading, I want to put in a word about factory ammunition. Mind you, one of my goals starting in 2000 was to reload all of my deer rounds. I have not fired a factory round since. What I am saying is therefore 20+-year-old advice, but it is still good.

Ammo in the 1980s was not as well made as it is today. The makers of ammunition do a better job of turning out consistent rounds now than they did. When I started reloading in 2000, it was partly to make rounds that were better than what I could buy. I do not think that is true. One thing that did me no good was not paying attention to the weight of the bullet. Every rifle shoots different bullets, especially different weights, differently. One usually has to experiment. I would recommend starting cheap and working up. With the deer chamberings I have used, any round you can find at Walmart that is meant for a deer will do a good job. You do not need to premium ammo or premium bullets. Deer are not that hard to kill.

By the time I came on the scene in the early 80s, bullet construction had come a long way from previous decades. Even the baseline offerings of the big manufacturers did a consistent job of killing deer. With that solved, the issue became consistency. I used to see wild variations in different lots of ammo from the same manufacturer. I do not see that anymore. Despite this, I recommend finding a load that works and then trying to acquire as large a stash of that lot as possible. I solved an accuracy problem with my Remington 742 by finding an off-brand South African brand called Musgrave and buying a whole case of 180 grain 30-06. I still have a couple of boxes of that ammo laying around. It outlasted the Rem 742 itself. I had to retire it due to a bad case of untreatable chatters.

Firing the same load from the same manufacturer from a consistent lot is still the best way to insure consistent performance with factory ammo.

If you are not inclined to reload, you can skip the next section. Suffice it to say that reloading gave me a cheap way to make serviceable, inexpensive, and consistent loads. As a result, I shot more and this improved my accuracy. I would still recommend it, but very little of what I include in this section will get you off Planet 4 MOA.

At the Reloading Bench

The initial 30-06 loading that I picked to for deer in 2000 was a 165 grain Hornady Interlock Soft Point over a less-than-MAX dose of H4895. I stuck with that load for all my 30-06 rifles for over 20 years. For my sons, I picked a 150 grain Remington Core-Lokt PSPCL over H4895. How I arrived at that load is a bit of a mystery for me, but it gave me mild recoil and better accuracy than the factory stuff and I stuck with these loads through dozens of deer. I never really questioned it.

When I started to branch out to different chamberings, I pretty well stuck with Hornady Interlocks and Remington Core-Lokts whenever I could. I also stuck with H4895 for the most part. I was not going for the highest velocities, only mild recoil and decent accuracy. I have always been ultra-conservative when I load. If I find a load that gives reasonable accuracy and it is easy to shoot, I stick with it. When I do not find that straight off, I usually change bullet weight in the same product line and give it a try. Usually, within a couple of attempts, I find something I can live with.

I treat every spent case like it was gold. A round of brass fired from an individual rifle is usually going to make a more accurate reload for that same rifle. I have always segregated my brass by the rifle they were fired in. I usually start with 1-fired brass that I purchase in bulk. I clean every round of brass until it shines. I never clean primer pockets or uniform the touch holes.

The Payoff

The big payoff really did not come until this year. I finished Chemo at the end of July, and I spent most of August running back and forth to the hospital with them pumping whole blood, platelets, magnesium, and the kitchen sink into my veins to clean up the mess left by the bug juice. I was about a month late getting back to the farm, and when I finally got down, I was too weak to do much more than move from one chair to the other. I knew my time preparing for deer season was going to be tight, so I concentrated on sighting-in a set of 4 rifles that were fairly settled. Two had minor question marks: My TC Compass had taken a single doe but at fairly close range. I had switched The Ruger Hawkeye in 30-06 to 150-grain bullets, the previous year and had not had a chance to take a deer with it.

I was still so tired at the beginning of October that I had to rest moving from the shooting bench to the gun cases on the other end of the front porch. My legs were rubber, and my hands shook. Still, I got my Hawkeye out, threw it up on the bench and took a shot. It was way off the mark, but that was the first fouling shot. I did not worry. I laid down three more and practically stuck them in the same hole 2 inches above the bull– just where I’d set it the previous year. Probably, what I should have done is tried for at least a 5-7 shot group, but I really did not have the energy for it. It went back in the case, and I brought out the next one.

I got much better in the run-up to the Rifle Opener. 45 days later, I had gone from tottering to walking halfway normally and on the third day of season, I went out to the blind at Midway for the morning hunt. The hike out in the dark pretty well wore me out, and it did not take long after I was settled in for me to start dozing off. I stayed that way, slipping in and out until 0900. I woke up enough to see a buck at the extreme southern edge of the field. He started walking away from me as I got the Hawkeye up on the rest and he finally stopped and gave me a quartering-away shot just before he went into the treeline.

That turned out to be somewhere between a 190 and 200-yard shot, and it was by far the longest shot I have ever taken on a living thing. Back at the meatpole, the buck measured up to be the largest I had taken in a decade and I had neatly blown out both lungs. After I got home, got the 50-some pound of venison in the freezer and got the head buried for a European Mount, I started to remember my post about Planet 4MOA and realized that I had finally escaped.

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