Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Express Rifles and Big Bores Only Question for the .400 Whelen Crowd

Having been playing with this rifle quite a while now. I took it to the Texas/Mexio border last month to look for a pig but was mostly focused on getting my 10 year old daughter one. I re-scoped it with a 2-7 Leupold with thick crosshairs for a little better low light and night time setup versus the 1.5-5x 20 that had been on it.



I had set the zero to be dead on at 100 yards as that is where I anticipated the pig shooting to be at. After 1800 miles I took it out to test zero and was pretty darn happy...



My 10 year old did the same with her .243 and we were ready to hunt...



The outfitter had indicated that he didn't have a lot of pigs but tended to have big pigs. What we saw on camera confirmed that. Mostly boars on the property and Addie focused on a nice two tone boar. Took some patience but we managed to find Addie her "Dream Pig" so all was good...



Not sure why I am shooting a .400 when an 85 TSX out of a stubby .243 kills them pretty darned dead, lol.

I may have finally settled on my favorite way to make brass. QC is obviously the easiest and is headstamped properly. However, I have not been particularly happy with the consistency of the primer pockets (some virgin cases are very tight and some are fairly loose and don't hold up to very many firings). My QC cases do have the "reverse donut" issue mentioned above also. Not enough to interfere with chambering but it is annoying when you pay $2/case.

I have formed a lot of cases with the reverse .41 caliber bullet method as well as Cream of Wheat. Both work. Using virgin Hornady .35 Whelen cases I was getting some excessive case stretching as I ended up with a few cases separating on the 2nd or 3rd firing. I figured it is better to do most of the forming with a die so I can better control where the brass flows from and to during fireforming. Also, I am at the point with the rifle where I just want lots of trigger time with actual hunting loads in field positions. Having a fire-forming load strictly for making brass and a separate hunting load isn't as efficient for my limited range time and finite supply of LR primers.

An expander die that will straighten the whole case out would be great if I had one. I tried a .416 Ruger die but it doesn't quite get the shoulder where it needs to be. I fiddled around and settled on using a .40 S&W expander die to expand out the case mouth down to below the neck shoulder junction on a virgin annealed .35 Whelen Hornady case.



Expands the case out a fair bit to allow necking down and forming an appropriate shoulder to headspace off of and minimize brass flow (I think...I don't know much about metallurgy and such)





Imperial sizing wax outside, inside and a little on the expander for the first case or two is your friend...



From there I simply run it into my .400 Whelen FL sizing die far enough for a snug fit in the chamber. Occasionally I would have a case that had to be backed out and re-lubed. The result is a band just below the shoulder junction that is about .458"



The difference in case capacity between this and a fully formed case is negligible. I shot some 350 and 400 Hawks with enough H4895 to get velocities where I expected them to be with legitimate hunting loads.



Cases end up short (they averaged 2.415" to 2.420" before firing) but they are nicely formed and I will be practicing at the range with a load producing a similar POI, trajectory and recoil impulse as my actual hunting loads.