Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats Has anyone hunted with the 7-30 waters ackley ?

Interested in reviews with the 7-30 ai used on medium sized game. Hopefully fired from 22-24 inch barrels with load data and effective range.

Might not be exactly what you were looking for but.......
I had one for a few years with a custom barrel 16" Thompson contender pistol. I used it to take a Sitka black tail deer on Kodiak Island from 150yds with 120gr BT's
Worked very well......but sold the pistol a couple years later.
It has been a few years but at the time the biggest problem was brass, most of it was garbage. hopefully you have better luck finding good brass to fireform for this round.

Hey Boat, where you getting bullet pass through at that distance?

I'm in the process of building a barrel for my single shot rifle. What advantage does the improved version hold over the standard 7-30 Waters? I haven't cut my chamber yet and now I'm intrigued. I shoot a 30-30 AI and really like the increases I get with it.

Don’t know Dinny, I’m sold on anything ackley. I am just thinking of a future build down the road.

I would definitely lay into a nice stock of the 120gr BT’s. I had a MGM 24” contender barrel and it shot these exceptionally well and performance is great.

How does the AI compare to the 7mm Bullberry?

How is the 7-30 Waters AI much different, performance wise at least, from the 7mm Shooting Times Easterner (7 STE) that Layne Simpson pushed a number of years back?

The Simpson cartridge is based on the 307 win. Larger case. Puts more pressure on the action. Just from what I read.

Isn’t the 7-30 waters already an “improved” case? I may be wrong, just wondering out loud.

Sort of/kind of.

Just not the standard "AI" 40° shoulder.

Thinking the Bullberry is basically a 7-30 Waters Improved.

That’s what I have read. There will be someone that chimes in that has the field tests

It's not. The 7mm BB is basically the 7mm Int'l Rimmed with the unnecessarily long neck trimmed back to give a case length of 1.75". I used a 20 1/8th Contender barrel in 7mm Bullberry for many years and racked up well into three figures of big game kills with it. A 120 grain Ballistic Tip at 2651 fps or a 140 grain BT at a bit over 2400 fps both work exceptionally well on game. Ditto for the long-discontinued 130 grain Sierra SSP at 2500+ fps.

I also took quite a bit of game with a 24" 7-30 Waters barrel. A book load of W748 gave me 2603 fps with the 140 grain CT-BST -- and that one put down lots of hogs. One of my longest shots with it was a boar at 353 yards. Bullet performance was textbook. A later 23" Waters shined with a mild load of Re-15 and the 120 grain BT at 2650 fps.

Inside of 300 yards, there's not a hog, whitetail or mule deer alive that couldn't be cleanly harvested with either the 7mmBB or the 7-30.

Improving the Waters to AI configuration may give you a few fps more, but it's not enough to matter anyway. The biggest advantage to an AI case in a single shot like the Contender is that -- theoretically -- you'll be trimming less frequently and that it is supposedly easier on the frames (backthrust).

And if you want a do-it-all bullet for the Water, look no farther than the 120 grain Nosler BT.

This one was recovered from a large boar after a quartering-to presentation.

I figured you would see this and chime in.

Thanks Bobby, good info!

Alan-

No problem. Here's the tip of the iceberg with the 7mm BB and 7-30 Waters over the years.













Here's the 7mm BB and the 24" 7-30 together:

Here's another recovery. The majority of 120 grain BTs pass completely through. And before anyone asks, yep, these blue-tipped bullets are Nosler 120 grain BTs. They were an over-run for an ammo maker and then sold through SPS.

entry w/ 120 grain Nosler:




Exit on same hog:






120 grain BT impact on very edge of hog's heart: