Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters RL 15 and Varget in a 300 Savage '99

Does anyone have favorite loads out there with these powders?

Seems they are a might hard to come by, but would simplfy my pile of powder at the bench if they will work well with 150's and 165's.

Thanks,

Varget tends to work well with either bullet weight, RL-15 a little better with 165's, at least in my experience.

RL-15 is my first choice for 165 grain Partitions or Speer HotCors in the 300 Savage. I'm out of town so I don't have my loading data available, but I'm sure someone else here will help you with a specific load.

41 grains of reloder 15 with a Hornady 150 grain flat base spizer interlock bullet. Shoots a inch group and has killed many deer for me over the years. All deer shot with complete pass through except for one big doe years ago. It was my last day of the hunt and I had not shot a deer, this big doe came out of the woods right next to me. She spooked and kicked in the afterburners, I made the perfect Texas heart shot, bullet passed through the lungs, missed all the guts (nice) and landed deep in her neck after busting her spine. She was dead when she hit the ground. That bullet went through 3 feet of deer.

I loaded some 150gr Sierras for a buddy who was banged up pretty good. And older 99 he had been given shoots three into <1.5" groups pretty consistently with 40-41gr RL15. In my 700 Classic, I load 44gr and the Sierra and it holds 1.3-1.4" groups. Haven't done any real load development with either rifle.

That combination ought to do much better than that if you're quoting 100 yard group sizes. I'm seating the flat base Sierras out to about 2.7" for my Classic and 44 gr. RL15 puts them into 2" pretty regular at 300 yards.

I load Varget in my 99 .300. It does quite well, 150-165 gr. bullets. It's about 2.5" I think, with an older Unertl scope.

The only work with the rifle was to replace the J-lock with a Callahan firing pin, set the trigger to 2.75#, and put a 4x leupold in weaver rings on it. Gotta get it out to play some more.