Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Bullet Pulling and Polish Match Loads help needed

Hey Guys,

Ive started down the path of hunting with a Ruger mini 30 and have some questions in regards to reloading. Finding good hunting ammo in the caliber is impossible these days and im sitting on cases of milsurp ammo.

What I would like to do is pull the bullet on cheap soviet milsurp 124gr ammo and replace it with the Barnes .310 monolithic. Having not loaded these in the past do you all think is safe? Are these known to run higher pressure than regular FMJ type projectiles? Also, what would be the best bullet puller for this endeavor? Id like to use this a whitetail load

Next is the barnes 150gr .311 monolithic they make for the .303. Ive got a ton of soviet 154gr ammo so I was thinking of pulling that bullet and replacing it with the barnes. Velocity on the154 is about 2100fps on my chronogrhaph and id like to use this for black bear over bait and perhaps an elk at less than 200 yards.Keep in mind this would be 1 time elk load...not an every day load. I understand this is going to be on the fringes

Ive been reloading for over 20 years but have never attempted anything like this.

Barnes makes no mention on their website and im wondering what the lowest velocity i can expect good expansion is. This is likely going to be my limiting factor on the 150gr load. Im thinking maybe 1500fps?

Here is a ballistic chart of my proposed black bear and elk load...

https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/galleries/15668099#Post15668099

Are those cases brass or steel? I would not bother with steel cases. Also I hope you work up a load,, just swapping bullets could be risky. It may work fine but I would dump a grain or two of powder and try those before using the full load.

I like a collet style bullet puller and avoid inertia ones as much as possible. I am using an RCBS and the only thing I don't like is each collet is specific per caliber, some of the others will work for multiple calibers.

JB has written that inertia bullet pullers can loosen the jacket to core relationship and reduce accuracy. This is only a concern if you are re-using the bullets.

Barnes are good to about 1,800 fps for full expansion, they will expand some down to 1,600 but at 1,500 it would not be reliable or only a partial expansion. The bullets you are using could have a lower velocity threshold, you might contact Barnes. I would limit ranges to what you would consider 30-30 distances, I have seen them stretched pretty far but 200 yards seems like a safe conservative limit.

Great info DBoston Thank you.

I did some checking with Barnes and the 125gr is built for lower velocities and is designed to expand down to 1500fps.

I am talking about steel case ammo here. I’ve got lots. Plan was to dump 2 grains and see how everything looked...hopefully run the full load with the 125gr.

Is it not possible to pull down and press a different bullet in with steel cases?

The old bullets will be scrapped

Since you are not needing to re-prime, you should be good-to-go on resizing the well-lubed necks of your steel cases after a light deburring.

Navy Ammo Depot used to build a lot of target ammunition for Navy match shooters by pulling the 173 gr military match bullet and replacing it with a 168 gr Sierra Match King -- we fondly called those "Mexican Match" rounds and they were great for 600 yards and shorter ranges... jim

Never worked with steel cases. They should work at least once. I would not try to reload them again they are likely to split.