Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Don't Forget About Those Reduced Loads

This thread reminds me of what I read about Colonel Townsend Whelen in his early days when he used a single-shot .30-40 Krag and cast bullets and reduced loads for small game. He used the 220 grain load for large game. In some ways he liked the Krag more than the .30-06 because of the reduced recoil and 30 inch barrrel.

Been using them long before, all of these shortages.

I don't need a 500 yd load, to take down a 100 pound blacktail at 100 yds.

Since I have plenty of primers.. this winter I've been ringing steel at 300 yds with my 223s
with a charge of 9 grains of Unique with 40, 50, 52, 53 and 55 grain bullets.

worked just fine at 400 yds also...

teaches you to shoot better at longer distances, and teaches one how to use their scope's features...

This is a pretty good argument for having at least one rifle of .30 caliber or larger in the safe! For those of us that wish to be prepared for a “survivalist” type scenario…. a medium bore with light to moderate loads with cast bullets can cleanly take larger game! memtb

Yep. The beauty of mid-size .30's like .30-30, .303 Savage, and .30-40 is that factory-level loads can be concocted using cast bullets that are capable of withstanding the velocity without leading and be soft enough to expand nicely on soft tissue - and be as accurate as jacketed stuff too. Adding reduced loads, from "mouse fart level" to mid-range stuff, using the same mold is icing on the cake. A guy with one of those rifles, a couple good molds, and a well thought out stash of primers/powder can "live by the rifle" long after the lights go out. Frankly I'd rather have an outfit like that than a stash of .22LR's - while the .22 can do it all in a pinch, I'd feel a whole lot better about drawing down on a deer with a centerfire .30 at 2000fps while my hungry belly is tied up in knots than with a .22.

Example: .30-40 with 220gr. cast bullets at 2000fps equals the old Army load of a 220gr. jacketed bullet at the same velocity, and that same load with soft point bullets accounted for every species in North America and was considered to be "heap big medicine" during the first half of the 20th century. Substitute a 150gr. plain base bullet at 1000fps or so and small game is on the menu. We've become obsessed with higher and higher velocity and fancy equipment that we've lost sight of our roots, what's necessary for survival on a simple basic level.

You'll always find lead for melting into bullets, it's everywhere. If nothing else in a SHTF scenario just go around prying lead wheelweights off of all the cars/trucks that'll be sitting abandoned on the roads and streets.

I cast my first bullets to feed an old M94 Winchester on my 16th birthday in the moth of August 1954. If I reach my next birthday come mid August I will have been reloading and shooting cast bullets for 69 years. DAMN! Seems like only yesterday I popped those first reloads down that old rifle. I still have it too. It was originally my Great grandfather''s rifle that he bought in 1911. Since then I've run cast bullets in .223 Rem and .22 Hornet, 30-30, .308. 30-06, .358 Win., .35 Whelen, .375 H&H, 45-70 and .458 Win. Mag. To be honest, most of the time it's ben in the 30 calibers. I've loaded the 30-30 with plinking loads and full power hunting loads but prefer to run the hunting loads at about 1950 FPS rather than 2100-2200 FPS. For the .308 most loads were either plinking loads and target loads for killing paper. Did in quite a few jackrabbits as well. The .358 and .35 Whelen have mostly been experimental work as best as I haven't found anything that I like so far. The 45-70 shoots decently with a 330 gr. hollow point bullet and the .458 when O had in was fun. I'd wait a day or so after a rainy day and shoot 300, 400 and 500 gr. cast bullets at 45-70 BP lever gun loads and then dig them out of the damp sandbank. Got some interesting results. he 300 gr, RNFP bullets gave perfect mushrooms that looked exactly like those button mushroom you can buy in a can. The 400 gr. gave a decent mushroom but the 500 gr. bullets never opened up. Strange, because all three bullets came from the same pot of alloy.
On the .375 H&H, I used an RCBS bullet, #37-250-FN IIRC the mold number, I worked up to a load mentioned in the American Rifleman that was part of a two part article on working up cast bullet hunting load in the .375 for an African hunt. One of the loads shot well in my Ruger #1 .375 H&H so that's the one I stayed with.
Current work is with a Browning B78 30-06 with a 220 gr. Lyman round nose bullet at 30-40 Krag velocity level. Results have ben promising although it requires a lot of bullet weighing. One mold is marked 308284 and casts out at 225 gr. The other is a two cavity mold marked 311284 and casts bullets at 215 and 220 gr. I have a bad habit of running both at the same time so I need to weigh the bullets if I want any kind of accuracy. I have a Browning clone of the 1895 Winchester in 30-06 and I'm thinking of trying those 220 gr. bullets in that one as well.
I'm at the point in my life where the bigger boomers just ain't the fun they used to be. About the heaviest kicker I might shoot today would be my .35 Whelen if I were doing an elk hunt More than likely it would be a 30-06. The only full power stuff I've been working with lately is the 7x57 load to 7-08 levels. I might even drop down to that level if there is an elk hunt in my future.
PJ