Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Mule Deer 7mm Remington Magnum

Since I have H-1000 I'm wondering if it's possible to get 3000 FPS with 162 grain SST with H-1000 in the 7mm Remington Magnum

It just might depend on the cartridge involved.

That would be a useful bit of information 😀

I was able to achieve 3,100 FPS using H-1000 and the Hornady 162 gr. BT. NO PRESURE SIGNS in the Rem 700 I was shooting.

In my experience should be pretty easy from the typical 24" barrel.

I loaded 2 grains over Hogdon's max load which is 70 grains and I went to 72 grains for 2932 FPS.
My rifle is an Interarms Mark X

The 7mm Rem Mag is frustrating to me, I have a Sako AV that will shoot 160 AB's at 3000+ with H1000, RL26 or RL22 with fine accuracy.............I dialed in a load for 2 different customers that had Tikka's (supposedly made in the same factory as Sako) not a chance either would hit 3000fps with any load I tried

Your experience seems to be the norm with the 7mm Remington Magnum, it is a strange cartridge

I got 3000 with a 168 VLD with H1000 in a 24" Remington m700.

Yeah, the 7mm RM can act weird--one of the reasons SAAMI dropped the standard Maximum Average Pressures a LOT after piezo-electronic testing became common. Have mentioned this before in my writing here and there....

After looking over my long-time loading notes for the 7mm RM, the three powders that worked the best for bullets in the 160-grain class were Ramshot Magnum, VV N560 and the late lamented IMR 8133. All three got excellent accuracy in my latest 7RM, a Mauser M18, and what I listed with 160-weight-class bullets in RIFLE LOADS THAT WORK. All got at least 3000 fps with published data.

I don’t have my notes with me at the moment but in the mid 90’s my favorite big game rifle was a Rem 700 24” 7 Rem mag…. Imr7828 and RL22 fell well short of published velocities. I shot that rifle over 3 dif chronies and it was much closer to 7-08 speeds than 7 mag… I eventually loaded to 5-6 grains over book max with RL22 and eventually just lost my nerve so to speak and quit. I was shooting 150BT’s and 160 partitions. I never saw any “pressure signs” but with only my chrony to guide me I quit adding powder and just accepted that it was a slow barrel.

My new 7 mag is a 26” barreled 700 and my first load was with IMR7977…. Guess I’ll be looking for a new powder soon but that rifle is right in line with published data.

Great info

I obtained 2 pounds of Magpro 73 grains gave 2985 FPS, 73.5 grsins reached 3064 FPS, 74 grains reached 3088 FPS

G'Day to you. I do not have any skin in the game, but WHY do you think this cartridge "can act weird"? Is there something about the case/cartridge design that can make it act weird? Is there something about the chamber design/tolerances that can make it act weird?

I have often wondered the same thing?

OldSchoolBestSchool,

Yes, apparently there is something about the 7mm Remington Magnum that makes pressures vary widely--both up and down.

This wasn't apparent when the cartridge appeared in 1962, because the cupper-crusher measurement system then commonly used wasn't sensitive enough to detect it. But piezo-electronic measurement became the industry standard some years later, it was quite apparent--which is why SAAMI standard factory-load average pressures and muzzle velocities were dropped considerably.

This is widely known among the folks who run pressure laboratories. In fact, when a new piezo lab was built by a powder distributor around 2000, the local guy who was hired to run it was baffled by the wide variations he ran into when testing 7mm RM loads--and thought he must be doing something wrong.

But the folks who run such labs are quite generous with their info, so he called the head guy at a long-time lab and asked what he might be doing to cause such variations. The guy said, "Nothing. That's just the way the 7mm Remington Magnum acts!

Most of the pressure-lab folks I've talked to think it has something to do with the cartridge's shoulder angle, combined with the relatively short neck and chamber throat--partly because the .243 Winchester shows similar pressure variations--the reason the .243's SAAMI standard pressures and velocities were also reduced considerably after piezo-testing became the industry standard.

I inherited an unfired Winchester model 70 in 7mag. The 7mag never interested me for some reason, likely because I’m partial to .30 cal and bigger for most big game. I mounted a Meopta on a 20MOA Murphy precision rail. I’m seriously considering sending it to JES for conversion to a .338wm if for no other reason than I don’t want to load or buy ammo for yet another chambering. I decided to shoot some factory ammo through the chronograph for fun. All modern published velocities were 50-100fps slower than what the factory claimed. I took the original box of ammo that was purchased in 1965 when the rifle was bought and shot it through the chronograph, the actual velocity of that 57 year old ammo was 60fps FASTER than what was claimed on the box.

I wish I could find an excuse to leave it alone but I have no use for a 7mag. For the amount of powder and recoil I would rather send a 30Cal bullet or bigger down range but that’s only my hang up. I’ve hunted with and I’m friends with several guys that swear by their 7mag and they get the job done every year.

What I have seen is that just about any cartridge will "get the job done every year," if a bullet that penetrates and expands sufficiently is put in the right place.

3000 with a 160 shouldn’t be a problem. Nosler manual has loads for 160 approaching 3100 fps. I use a Nosler RL22 load that pushes a 175 gr in the mid 2900s out of a 24” M70

I have never been a 30 cal fan. Borrowed my uncle’s 30-06 m700 in high school - didn’t like the gun and seemed like it kicked a lot. Borrowed my friend’s dad’s m700 in 7mm mag, still didn’t love the gun and it kicked no more than the ‘06, maybe less, and I killed everything I shot at. So with a couple of detours, I got to M70s - 25-06 and 7mm RM are the rifles I hunt with the most.

That is really neither here, nor there, I just never got to like 30’s. They don’t get the ballistic free lunch from high BC bullets like 7mm and 338s. 300 Win Mag always seemed overkill for deer, and 338 better for bigger things.

To each there own, kinda splitting hairs in the end.

Yep. 70+ of Retumbo will get you there easily.