Labor Day Reloading Projects

What is left of Hurricane Isaac is moving through Cincinnati this morning. We had originally thought about staying at the farm all weekend, but the forecast seemed rather dire. We all opted to stay home. A wide-eyed Obama supporter showed up at our door the other night, asking our opinions on President Obama and Sherrod Brown. I don’t think she liked my responses. However, it reminded me that I was way behind on reloading projects.

I was out of work 2.5 years and then underemployed another 1.5 years. I just accepted an offer that puts me back closer to where I was in 2008. Being unemployed does not mean you have to stop reloading, but it helped to cut back. It’ll be a year or so before we are far enough out of the hole that I can go back to loading with gay abandon. However, I feel quite a bit more comfortable.

I spent a lot of time at the reloading bench that first year I was off. It helped kill the boredom. However, after I had gotten caught up on all my then-current projects, I scaled back to conserve components and money. That was 4 years ago. That left me going into this weekend with a big backlog.

.223 Rem/ Win PP 64 Grain/ H4895

This is a project that in one form or another I have been putting off since 2001. Back then, I had an idea of doing a deer load for my Mini-14. I had a Mini’ that shot well– a lot better than most Mini-14, from what I read on the web. I was hesitant, though; it seemed to be a lot less than what what was needed for the big deer we often encounter here in the Greater Ohio Valley. I tried a few bullets. The 75 grain Hornady’s keyholed on me. I have a Savage 340 in 223 Rem as well. It shot the 40 grain Speer TNT’s wonderfully, but . . . long story short, the idea of a 223 Rem deer load got shelved.

What resurrected the project was two things. First, I decided to start using the Savage 340 for coyote. I have taken Angus’ old MP3 player and a little amplifier I got from Radio Shack and made a whopping-good coyote caller. Check out this site: Varmint Al’s Hunting Page. I have built his Bi-Fur Pod and his coyote caller. He’s got some great .MP3’s . You should see what the chihuahua vs. chicken track does to my Jay and Lily.

Second, my new daughter-in-law, ‘Sota slipped at worked and trashed her right wrist and shoulder. She wants to come deer hunting this fall, but we do not know what the shoulder is going to be like. I decided to put the .223 Rem project on the front burner just in case.

I had 64 grain Winchester PowerPoints laying about for years. I matched them with H4895 and some CCI primers and loaded from the MIN to the MAX in .5 grain increments. When I get them to the farm, I’ll chrono them and see which load groups the best.

30-30 WIN /160 GR Hornady FTX/ Hodgdon LVR

When the LEVERevolution hit, back before I got laid off, I was highly skeptical, but not wholly dismissive. My feeling was and is that a 30-30 is not a 30-06. Similarly, you do not use a tack hammer to frame a house. 30-30 is a fine round. If you’ve read back through my weblog, I have a somewhat checkered history with the chambering, but overall I feel that as long as you let it do what it was supposed to do, 30-30 will do the job. Angus DID finally take a nice doe with it. Mooseboy finally fessed up that until he switched to the M1 Garand, he was frequently closing his eyes when he shot.

I am always a big proponent of blaming the rifle for all mistakes while deer hunting, and I am a strict disciplinarian. When the Marlin 336 did not perform well for Mooseboy, I put it in the back of the safe and did not let it out until I thought it had learned its lesson. I have relented.

Again, my reasons for letting the Marlin 336 and the 30-30 cartridge back out of of the closet are tied to coyotes and to my new Daughter-in-Law. I figure that, if ‘Sota’s shoulder is up to it, the Marlin 336 will be a good starter rifle for her. Additionally, I treated myself to a jar of Hodgdon LVR last year for my birthday. Using 150 grain Winchester FP’s, I was able to get over 2400 fps. That is a good 200 fps over the H4895 load I cooked up for Angus for his first successful deer hunt.

This year I treated myself to a box of Hornady FTX for my birthday. Yeah, that’s right: I bought the powder last year, the bullets this year. I have become a cheap bastard, even to myself. You have to understand that the FTX bullets are the most piss-elegant bullet I have ever allowed myself to purchase. It’s a thing with me, I guess. I figure that shooting a deer with $.25 bullet versus a $1.00 bullet makes sense. However, the FTX has come down to $.30 and the Winchesters have gone up to $.29. Okay, I can make the switch. The other good news is that if I put it all together and it all comes out right, I can take my Marlin 336, sit at one end of a 200 yard-long pasture and knock a deer over with confidence. Previously, I had only used a 30-06 or the Whelenizer for those tasks.

Whether or not, ‘Sota ends up using the Marlin 336 for deer this year, I have been thinking of using it as a coyote gun. If you look at the performance of the 130 grain Speer, it looks like a reasonable coyote killer. However, I am sure the 160 grain Hornady FTX will also do the job.

30-06/ Remington PSPCL 150 Gr /H4895

This is the Moose Load. Grandpa’s Lesson teaches us

But ain’t many troubles that a man cain’t fix

With seven hundred dollars and a thirty ought six.

I gave Moose a Winchester 750 in 30-06 for Christmas a few years ago, and he’s been taking care of things quite well with it ever since. It is the quintessential Blue-Light Special rifle and shoots a cheap Corelokts just fine.

30-06/ Hornady Interlock 165 Gr /H4895

This is my version of a Blue Light Special, the 7.62X63 Briar Light Magnum (BLM). Mine is a Winchester 670 and the 165 grain bullet is. . . well, it is the first bullet I tried in the rifle when I started reloading, and it worked so well, I never tried anything else. It uses the same amount of powder as the Moose Load (47 grains of H4895), so I can load these together at the same time. I just have to keep the trays marked.

Both the Moose Load and the BLM fodder were at their 4th reloading, and I figured it was time to anneal them. My method? I use a propane torch and heat each round, rotating them in the flame until I start to see red and I can feel heat in the fingers, and then I drop them in a pie pan of water. It is simple and cheap and keeps away neck splits.

35 Whelen/ 200 GR SPCL 200 GR/H4895

I have gone 4 years working off the same batch of 50 rounds. This is requires quite a bit more powder and more lead than a 30-06 load. As such, if you are thinking about these things, I would tell you that a 30-06 kills whitetails just as dead for considerably less money. Still, this IS my top deer-getter. Over the past 4 years I have taken 4 deer with it, and changed out the scope and still had 15 rounds left. I am reloading 25 rounds. Angus may be graduating high school before I need to do this again.

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