MD, I am not sure why the Whelen is so watered down myself, it seems it was highly built in Springfield's, 1917's, etc...(Pretty strong rifles right?) Probably the same reason the 257 lingers, but loaded to modern spec's runs very hard? Don't know.
I got my M700 CDL in 2005. Shot a few deer with the Remington ammo, 200 PSPCL's. I didn't like how they performed at all. I started looking for a better bullet and some data for it. I found some on 35cal.com and then I found the load you mentioned on Alliant's website with a 250. I worked up slowly with the 225 TSX, and got to 59 grains of RL15 and everything looked pretty mild there, so I crept up to 60.5, I averaged around 2750 with that bullet and excellent accuracy.
I see the same softening of the data you are. It's really too bad, as I believe a 35 Whelen and 338 Win Mag, loaded to the same specs are pretty close ballistically, at least to 400 yards. I use both the Whelen and 338 a bunch. Love the two cartridges.
Also, I am not sure what happened but you have a "I've seen a"... Then it stopped.
