This was a good excuse to call my buddy (who has lived and breathed .35 Whelen since Regan was president) and he told me that in his experience the 200/15 Unique load should generate around 1700 fps. It's a load he too used long ago with fine results both at the range and in the woods. He said also he wouldn't go over around 19 grains Unique, which would generate 1900 fps- not that pressure gets too high for a good bolt gun but that you're starting to reach the elastic limits of wheelweight alloy. (Neither of us breaches the 2000fps level with soft alloys like that, it's not needed for deer killing and leading often starts and accuracy falls off beyond that. Harder alloys of course fix that but then terminal expansion decreases too. Anecdotally my favorite hunting load for both .30-30 and .303 Savage is a 190 flat nosed soft cast bullet over 28 grains 3031 which chronos 2030fps out of a 24" Winchester M54 barrel.)
Since he and I both have pretty much a lifetime supply of 4759 neither of us use Unique for very much cast bullet rifle shooting these days, and Tommy uses 4759 for the bulk of his Whelen work. (When discontinuance was rumored we scoured the internet and brick and mortar stores for miles around for stray cans of that powder.)
Frankly, if you don't want to tread higher with Unique, I would look at 3031 for mid-range cast bullet deer loads in the 2000fps region. I suspect there's joy to be found there.
Beyond the little I've transmitted here, my advice would be to consult Hodgdon's load data, or Lyman's cast bullet manual. (I have a copy somewhere, if you need me to I'll dig it out and look up something.)
Last edited by gnoahhh; 01/04/19.
