Home Forums Hunting & Shooting BPCR .40-65 Accuracy

I posted this on another board, but I thought I'd give it a try here as well. My silhouette rifle is a Browning high wall .40-65. I shoot a 420 gr. Paul Jones Creedmoor bullet. This past weekend I had my best ever score going, but blew it on rams. It was especially frustrating, because our silhouette range is still "under development", and as presently set up there is no way to spot misses on the ram line; the shots just disappear. I suspect that my load is pooping out at 500 meters, but I am only able to test on paper out to 300 yards on our local range. My question: What muzzle velocity is needed to keep the 420 gr. Creedmoor stable and accurate out to 500 meters? I'm using about 57 grs. of Swiss 1.5, but haven't chronographed it yet. Any help would be appreciated.

Paul

Paul,

I also have a Paul Jones mould for the 420 grn Creedmoor. Mine actually cast out at 422 grns in 30-1. When i bought this mould I also bought Pauls 422 grn Spitzer. When I got to shooting these for my scope gun i found that across the board the spitzer out shot the creedmoor in my Highwall. It shot so much better than the creedmoor that I never actually workerd with the creedmoor very much. Around this time I was shooting the Rams very well. With my Meacham 45-70 Iron sights rifle I shot 19 Silhouette matches and my Ram count was 181, so I was shooting the Rams pretty dogon good that year. My score with the 40-65 and the spitzer was not quite that good as I was not shooting that many scope matches but of the 7 scope matches I shot with the 40 my Ram count was 65. I got to wondering why the creedmoor 40 caliber bullet was falling apart on the Ram line in practice. I redid some of the loads and always the results where the same, Creedmoor was fine at the pigs but "IFFY" at the longer distances. I talked to Paul Jones and some of the guys I shoot with and the consenses was speed things up some. As I did this, to get this bullet moving I went from my regular 2 FG Swiss powder to 3 FG Swiss. I do not have my notes here with me now so I dont have the chrony #'s but as I remember the faster I pushed the creedmoor the better it did. I finally stayed with the spitzer in the 40 caliber as no matter what I did it always out shot the creedmoor. I do think you are on the right track with the speed of this bullet though. Speed it up some and I just bet it will start to do some better. Good Luck!

Gunny

Thanks Gunny,

Damn, I can see the writing on the wall. In addition to my Jones Creedmoor molds in .40 and .45, and a couple of Lymans, I see a spitzer or two in my future. I should mention that I am in a parallel situation with my .45-90 mid and long range rifle. The Creedmoor is great out to 800 yards, but I've been wondering about 900 and 1000. Still can't rule out the shooter as the main problem, though, but I'm thinking more velocity would be worth a try, if I can still get the good accuracy I've had so far with the PJ Creedmoor. Oh yeah, when I was on the ram line on Saturday, I was sure wishing I was shooting my .45-90. I KNOW it will kill rams and anything else out to 600-800 yards or so!

Paul