Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors Onebag of brass to go till I start loading cartridges for my .303 Savage Model 99 F.

I now have everything needed to start loading cartridges for my 99 F, but for one bag of .303 Savage brass which I am ordering in a few weeks. Jeep Cherokee repairs of $500.00 came first, unfortunately, but I need to be mobile for things like a job, so that's the way it goes.
I still have not gotten any round nosed bullets of any weight in .308 for this rifle, so I will have to start with the ever present 147-150 grain full metal jacket bullet, and use loading data from the data sheet in the Lee .303 Savage dies I have to find a starting load. And so it goes.

Careful you don't get too excited about shooting your 303, those soft Savage barrels are probably only good for 4-5000 rounds before they start showing signs of wear.

.30-30 style bullets work real well in the .303 unless you are going for heavier than the 170 grain. I like the Speer 170 flat nose bullets with I3031 or I4895. Have also shot a bunch of 150 grain corelokts. The .303 is about my favorite at the bench. Light recoil and usually very accurate.

Use the 30-30 load data for .308 bullets. The lee data is for .311 bullets. Start with mininum loads and go up until you are happy with accuracy.

Is PRVI brass still available from Graf's? If it is, grab some. It's good stuff.

When you're ready, I'll fix you up with a sampling of heavy 180 or 190 blunt nosed cast bullets to try. I don't think casual firing of jacketed bullets in our old barrels will hurt anything, but I would re-think that if you're Gung-ho and shoot the heck out of it. That's one of the reasons I use mostly cast lead bullets in all the old ones anymore. I went back through my handloading records a couple weeks ago tallying up the numbers of rounds I made for various calibers. (So what's time to a pig, ha ha.) Since I started loading .303 Savages, I found that I have fired over 2500 rounds of it over the last six years or so. I shudder to think what wear I would have induced in those 100 year old barrels had they been jacketed bullets. [Side comment: over just the last year I fired over 500 lead bullets through my 80 year old 5.6x35R (.22 Hornet) One might say I'm a lead junkie.]

Gary Still available.
Yes

Gary,

Out of curiosity, do you use gas checks on your cast bullets?

Thanks,

Doug

Yep, except for 150 grain plain base ones that get driven at .22LR velocities. Cheaper than shooting .22 rimfires these days too. With the higher velocity ammo the biggest expense is the primer, but overall cost is still about 1/4 that of factory ammo and I can duplicate factory performance in cartridges of the .30-30/.303-class.