Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters 7mm-08 youth loads?

I'm loading some 120gr BT Nosler in a Remington 700 mountain rifle 22" barrel. It's for my 7 year old girl what do you think would be the minimum velocity for whitetail deer under 100yds 2400fps?

If Seafire doesn't chime in soon, send him a PM. He's done a bunch of testing along these lines.

2400 sounds good, but I wouldn't be afraid to go a little slower. I would want as little recoil as possible for a 7 year old. I would think that bullet would expand reliably down to 2000 fps (impact). FWIW, my mtn rifle shoots a 120 Sierra at 2350 with 34 grains of H4895.

41.0 grains of 4064 behind a 140 grain Accubond. Deadly combination and the single most accurate 7/08 load I have ever shot, period. Mild recoil, nasty on the other end.

I don't handload, but my stepson shoots the Remington Reduced Recoil loads in a 7mm-08. I sighted it in and there's a very substantial decrease in recoil, so perhaps look at how these are loaded and mimic?

I wouldn't go below the minimum loads for that round.

Low pressure is more dangerous then high pressure in a modern firearm.

http://www.handloads.com/loaddata/d...;type=Rifle&Order=Powder&Source=

Truthfully - you picked the wrong gun for a child that age.

You would be better served buying your young daughter a .222 Remington over your present choice.

Muzzle Blast, compounded by recoil will result in you scaring off your daughter from hunting at that age more then the experience of harvesting a white tail deer. Not to mention the fact that long hours in a deer stand tends to bore the heck out of little kids. I would ease her into hunting slowly and not be in such a rush to get her to shoot her first deer right off the bat.

I have a niece that could recite anything you wanted to know about hunting off the top of her head from the time she was 3 years old. She often times pulled the handle for my dad when he was reloading shells. They were best friends, and her dad even bought her a .243 when she was 6 years old, thinking that some day she was going to go hunting with him.

My sister and her X husband quit having children after she was born, even though what they really needed was a boy for dad to take hunting with him.
Well it ended up that she is kind hearted and she told her dad that she would accompany him on his hunting trips, she even told him not to get mad if she makes noise and scares the game away so he can't shoot it. She was just acting like she was interested in hunting because she wanted to please him.

Well she is 17 years old now and she has never gone hunting with him and she has never shot a gun and she doesn't intend to either. They still have their father / daugher times. He still takes her out to Wyoming and Colorado in the summer to go hiking and she was interested in going to school out near Gunnison when she graduates. Only her mom has her now and her dad and mom can't afford to send her to school, so pretty much unless she gets some kind of scholarship from some school, she is going to have a hard time going to college when she graduates. She has been taking college courses the last two years, while she is in high school and is really smart. But in my opinion, if she would have went hunting with daddy, I would bet that he would pull open the purse strings and pay for her to go to school someplace.

So the moral of this story is - I have been there, done that, ain't gonna do it again.

I have 15 guns and I have not seen my daughter since she was 6. I also planned on taking my daughter hunting with me one day, but it never happened either.

I'm probably just going to leave everything to my family when I die and let them fight over it.

Thank you all for the info! Going to try a can to IMR Trail Boss.... at about 1800fps with 140's .....

Hodgdon lists the maximum 7mm-08 Trail Boss 140 gr load as having a 1472 fps muzzle velocity, which is considerably below what is the minimum impact velocity for normal hunting bullets (1800 - 2000 fps is typical for minimum impact velocity).

Hodgdon Trail Boss loads (link to PDF file

You probably want to look at Hodgdon's youth loads, which are designed to be used out to 200 yards on whitetail-sized game.

Hodgdon Youth Loads (link to PDF file)

Hodgdon says you can reduce the listed youth loads by up to 10%, and you can certainly call them if you have any questions. Even with the Hodgdon 7mm-08 120 gr load reduced by 10% from the listed youth load, the recoil looks to be right at 7 ft-lbs for a Rem Mountain Rifle (assumed to weigh 7.5 lb with scope), which isn't much recoil at all for an adult, but it might be a little too much for a 7 year-old. My nephew will turn 7 in a couple months, and I can't see him doing very well with 7 ft-lbs of recoil.

If you have or could borrow a .243 (or even a .223), those might be better choices for a 7 year old with the right bullet and load. The .243 Hodgdon youth load has about half the recoil of the 7mm-08 youth load, and the .243 youth load reduced by 10% would be the maximum recoil I think I would let my nephew experience over the next year or two.

i did try a few of the remington reduced loads in my sons 7-08 last summer for grins to see how much less kick they had. not that i needed them for my son, i was just curious, anyway i was suprised by how much less they kicked in that browning micro than the regular factory ammo did. it definatly felt much less than my .243 does. as far as how well suited for your kid they will be, that will only be solved by actual range use but they will be close i bet.