Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Hornady factory "American Whitetail" 139 load details

Does anyone know the load data for 7mm-08 Hornady 139 grain Interlock American Whitetail ammo?

I figure after I shoot the three boxes I already have, I'll reload with the same bullet/powder/charge.

I know its the 139 gr hornady bullet.

If I was going to reconstruct: I'd take OAL and ogive via caliper, chrono a live one, pull the pill of another, dump, eyball and weigh the powder, check your empty fired case for H2O capacity, and start guesstimating from there.

GE

Or just start with 139 Gr SP's (flatbase) and arrive at same OAL with up to 50 gr H4350 or 48 gr Ramshot Big Game. But that'd be cheating. *grinz*

Remember always that ammo companies can access powders we cannot.

Most of them can get powder by the ton, blended to whatever specs they choose. They are not bound by the limitations of the handloader.

They may, or may not, be using one of the canister powders we can buy.

Chrono what you have, and work up loads that can duplicate those specs, it's about the best we can do as handloaders.

Thanks

Give them a call. I bet they would tell you.

I use Varget with the same bullet for essentially the same velocity. Can't imagine a better bullet for the 7-08

I've used Varget and RL15 with said bullet with equal results in 7-08.

I wouldn't bet that they would tell you what they use for factory loading. However, they may give you a powder reccomendation from their reloading manual.

your last line hit the nail on the head...

I do that all the time...

I did call hornady. They advised that on the lot I have its a none canister grade ball powder not available to handloaders. This particular lot used winchester standard primers. Unfortunately it shoots into groups of about 4 inches in my gun.

If you are going to chrono,pull a bullet and weigh the powder charge.What does checking the water capacity serve.Its obvious how much the charge is from weighing it.

Because the H2O of the fired case lets you know how much room that case lot will have after firing AND the charge tells you how much powder they put in the case.

Completely different variables when trying to duplicate factory specs.

GE

Well, it is obvious that the powder charge fit in there before the case was fired and from weighing it you can tell how much it was.Chances are a phone call to the manufacturer will get the powder brand.Measuring the water content in different brand cases makes sense ,but when you have a known weight on the powder in a single case it is just anal.if you go that far you need to do it to every case in the box as there could be a difference between the individual cases.You could then be SUPER ANAL!!!!

I wouldn't worry much about what the factory used. The 7mm-08 is a tractable cartridge. It's a near certainty that I could pull one of a half dozen or more powders off the shelf and quickly have the rifle shooting as well as it did with the factory ammo.

Bingo!!!!!i

David,

Dunno what Hornady uses, but in my rifle 46.0 grains of Big Game duplicates the 139 factory load in both velocity and accuracy.

Thanks John.

That's what I was looking for.

JB,

On a related note, I read your recent article in GUNS this week regarding the 7mm-08. First off, I enjoyed reading it, but I have a question regarding the 139/140gr load you posted with H4350. The velocity listed was somewhere around 2,960fps, which seemed rather stout. Was that maybe supposed to be 2,860fps? Not that 100fps matters that much, but that listed speed was outrunning the other powders listed by a fair margin from a 22" barrel.

I do like H4350 in that chambering and have been happy with it and 145's in my 20" barreled Remington.

JPro,

I've had similar results with H4350 in two different 22" barreled 7-08's, with two different lots of H4350, so it doesn't seem to be anomaly.