Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Multi-use rifle loads for one rifle

IS anyone actively working up two or even three different loads for their hunting rifles, not to fulfill the same purpose, but multiple uses from one rifle, with one scope setting?

I've always been of the school to use one rifle for a single load. Drives me nuts to see someone trying to sight their deer rifle in with four different boxes of factory ammo. Figure out which bullet you want to shoot then figure out the platform you want to launch it from. Done.

But what I find is in any given hunt I may be hunting blacktails at close range in the morning, then shooting across a canyon at a big bear in the afternoon. Then there's the times you spy a grouse or a rabbit while bear hunting and you're carrying your 300 magnum.

Ever think, what if I lived in the Alaskan bush and could only have one rifle, how would I make it do everything well? I know someone could shoot grouse, deer, and grizzly all with a 338 Winchester magnum, but you see the logic of what I'm asking?

So far I've done this to a degree with the 358 Winchester and 22-250. The idea being to carry a handful of ammo in your pocket for different opportunities.

It's a new-to-me concept that I'm really enjoying exploring. I've had perfect success so far with the two I've tried.

One reason the 06 and its variants are so popular, you get accuracy, power, plus a ton and a half of good bullets, from the 25s to 35s using ostensibly the same case, same action, same bolt face.

More than one way to skin a cat. I think a better approach is to develop that ONE load in your rifle that is effective for all the game you might encounter.

For example, Mule Deer has promoted using the 200gr Partition in 30-06 for such a purpose ..... you want a bullet that opens up on light game yet holds together and penetrates on larger game.

I hunt the early deer season in a wilderness area of a black bear overpopulation. I use a relatively light 160 gr copper, mid velocity deer load while hunting...and at night in spike camp, the 8x57 carbine is stoked to the gills with 200 gr partitions. I never even bothered to check zero on the bear load...if it's needed, it will be less than 20 yards.

When I went on a successful AK brown bear hunt, I knew I primarily would be hunting wolves if I scored, after I scored, on a bear, likely at longer ranges. I brought a .375 Wby sighted in 1” high at 100 yards with 300gr NPs with a MV of 2,750 fps. IIRC, the 260gr ABs (2,975 fps MV) were hitting one inch higher and a half inch to the left at 100 yds. After I got the bear, I loaded the ABs and adjusted the scope 4 clicks down and 2 clicks to the right. But I didn’t see a wolf that trip.

That’s the only time I’ve done something like that.

Next time, I just brought a 340 Wby throwing 225gr TTSXs at 3,140 fps for all things—near or far.

The ammunition industry during the early 20th century used to produce such rounds. Almost every loading had a FMJ load for fur hunters, and many had a factory loaded extremely light load for small game. These loads were either called a gallery load or a miniature. As an example, a 30-30 miniature round would be loaded with a 100-grain soft lead bullet and @5 grains of fast burning powder for a velocity of @1,000 fps. There were also devises called chamber adaptors that allowed a small handgun round to be fired out of a larger rifle chamber as long as both had same bullet diameter. These are still produced today. I carry a chamber adaptor while hunting with either a 308 Win or 30/06 that uses 32 ACP ammo. Accuracy at 25 yards is quite acceptable for small game and sight adjustments can be made. My guns hit 1" low and 1 1/2" to the right of my hunting round in my guns. When a grouse or rabbit is to be collected a slight off center hold is all that is needed. Extremely quiet and the velocities obtained in the longer barrel is @1200 fps when cronographed. I use the to finish off big game as well. Used it 3 times this year. Two finishing shots on mule deer and one antelope.

No sir! With the exception of cast bullets, which I don’t shoot nearly enough of……. one rifle, one bullet, one load, one zero for all of my hunting. This has worked for many years from the occasional coyote to deer, elk, moose, bear, and antelope.

The only change happening since 1992 has been……as Barnes developed new improved bullets, I would develop a load for it!


I knew a guy that was new to our area, and he made 3 different loads to hunt (his first and maybe his last ) elk hunt. Three different bullets, three different loads, three different zero’s. He found an elk…..iit very quickly turned into a “Mongolian CF”. Needed help to track and eventually kill the crippled elk a couple miles away. The only positive from this debacle was…..he didn’t give up the wounded elk! memtb

The likelihood of three different loads using the same scope setting is abysmally low. As others have stated you're better off using one bullet, one load. You'd be better off changing your zero distance.

For example a 200 gr NPT at 2550 fps zeroed at 25 yards will head shoot "grouse and rabbits" of opportunity. It'll also roughly be zeroed at 200 yards being about 1/2" high at that range. That'll have a MPBR of about 300+ yards on a 10" diameter target. If you want more range than that you'll have to dial or use holdover with a reticle of your choice.

The .358 uses a hunting load of 51 grains of TAC and a 180 Barnes ttsx sighted in at 100 yards. I worked up a small game load for 30 yard shooting that uses a 124 gr 9mm HP bullet and 7 grains of 2400.

Townsend Whelen was rather well known for developing a good hunting load for his rifles and then working up a small game load that would shoot to the same zero.
Whelen'a small game load for the .30-06 was said to give better accuracy at 50 yards than the average .22lr of the day.

I do load some of the Speer Plinkers for the wifes 30-30. Mostly for her to practice shooting with minimal recoil and blast.




I can see it being better for the firearms industry to sell new guns rather than make existing guns fill multiple niches. As must of us are handloaders, I was wondering if others still make this old practice work in the field.

Years ago I hunted exclusively with a 338 mag. mostly elk/deer in grizzly country. I acquired a Lee 230 gr mold , cast bullets with wheel weight alloy loaded Unique in various charges until it was dead on at 25 yds. Ended up at 8 grains and 800 fps. It was my grouse load when elk hunting

Not necessary but a fun exercise was developing these two loads for the problematic 22 Savage High Power with it's oddball .228 bullet diameter. I like the idea of a combo rifle for simultaneously deer and grouse hunting, but you give up alot with this approach. Like it's a friggen single shot, and it's a heavy gun, and your shotgun is scoped or your rifle is iron sighted. But, you have two guns, albeit a light cartridge for deer.






Someone here was selling unknown maker 60 and 70 grain .228 bullets so I bought a bunch of them for plinking, what with .228's being somewhat hard to find. I got a good load for 75 yard coyote call-ins and what not. Then I read somewhere that .224 bullets may work just fine in the High Power so I loaded some 55 grain Barnes ttsx bullets in it and finally got a load that shoots to the same poi as the hollow points. Now I have a good mono for deer and a good coyote load, and a 12 gauge shotgun for grouse, which in itself is very versatile, all in one.

Best I've been able to do was have a 150 NBT, 150NAB, and 150 E-Tip shoot to pretty much the same POI with the same load in one rifle. Allows practice with the cheaper NBT.

The one's I've tried had abysmal accuracy. The worst was 250-3000 adapter to 25 acp I think it was. The 250 used a standard .257 bullet and the acp used a .251. Not to mention the jump through the adapter before it even finds the rifle barrel. Yours is the first I've heard that anyone thought they were adequate accuracy-wise.

Handloaders can do much better with the full length case and proper bullets.

Did you find it useful or more a novelty? We don't have a ton of grouse here but you might see one every other day.

Yeah, that's not what I'm thinking and I can see that turning into a rodeo real quick.

You can't turn a 30-30 into a 300 magnum, but you can turn a 300 magnum into a 30-30, or 3-08, with some creative downloading. People complain about magnum recoil, magnum bloodshot and meat loss, magnum noise. So load it down for 90% of your hunting. Presumably if it's a long range shot where the magnum round is needed, you'll have a good chance to have the time to switch out the ammo.

My next project is to build three loads for a new 338 RPM. I hope to duplicate 338 Federal loads for most of my hunting but have a heavy load for longer shots, plus a small game load. Usually this approach has the caveat of magnum cartridges coming in heavy rifles so shooting 30-30 or 308 power loads loses the advantage of light rifles that are easy to carry.

Weatherby built the backcountry Ti to weigh 5 pounds so shooting 338 Federal level loads makes alot of sense rather than using magnum power loads all the time. Just gotta do the work and get them to shoot to the same poi, or one that makes sense anyway. With a light rifle hunting 338 Federal power loads for most everything but having the ability to jack it if needed it seems like a great solution.

That is a 19 year olds logic, or logic someone would have if they were ignorant. Find one load that will work very well for everything and go with it. It's really not hard to do.

Exactly, he made 3 high performance rounds, each with a different bullet for different circumstances. A genuine recipe for disaster! memtb

Looking back it was more of a novelty, I think I bagged one grouse with it and it worked well, then grouse numbers declined and I started hunting with a 308 Norma mag....

I don’t generally shoot anything but big game when hunting big game. Yes I have shot a grouse or ptarmigan for camp meat in the past but generally I do not. Locally we don’t have anything like that and if I’m hunting somewhere that does I’m generally on a fly in or at least out of state hunt and not interested in shooting small game when a moose, bear, or elk could be right over the next rise.

That said. All of my normally used hunting rifles will shoot multiple loads plenty close together as far as POI is concerned to just grab a handful of ammo and go hunt. If I decide I want to hunt with a specific brand or style of bullet in a given season I will generally zero with that load and stick with it but I don’t stress over it. I like to try out different bullets and rarely rezero if a quick check on a target shows they land within an inch or two.

My 30/06s get fed 165s as a rule and the two featherweights I use most often will put 165s from Hornady, Sierra, or Nosler in 2” groups if all mixed together. Same with the 270s and 130s and even the 270 Weatherby will shoot 130 Noslers and 150 Hornadys close enough together to not be worth bothering with. My Whelen will put any 250 I’ve ever tried into a pretty close cluster, though 180 Speers have a radically different point of impact which is okay since I don’t have a use for 180s in that cartridge. I would bet I’ve killed game with over 20 different makes, styles, and weights of bullets in my 223 without ever changing sight settings. Same for my 222 Mag but probably only 10 or 12 varieties of projectiles.

At the ranges I shoot game I’ve never been in a situation where an inch or two deviation between loads would make a difference.

When I lived in an area with long winters and difficult access to game, working up loads at the range and pontificating about them was fun. Living now in a place with no off season and routinely shooting 75-100 animals a year I’d rather hunt and test loads on critters than load ammo and punch paper.

My 458 mag with fixed express sights is dead on at 50 yds with a 500 gr load and 2" high with a 400 gr load

No. I start out with a few different bullets I am interested in using and try them. The winner goes hunting. One load per rifle. Plus we don’t have the variety of game here in SC. If a bullet works on deer it will work on everything else. Turkeys are off limits for rifles.

GreggH

.375 H&H, 300 grain A-Frame @ 2,460 fps / 350 grain Weldcore @ 2,300 for the big boys, and 250 grain A-Frame @ 2,700 fps for plains game.

Just know your dope and adjust accordingly.

Yea I have a 250 Savage to 25 ACP, and you are entirely correct about this particular adapter. Worthless is a compliment. I have collected adaptors for many years now and have tested quite a few. The 30 calibers to 32 ACP have @1 1/2" groups at 25 yards. Plenty of accuracy for small game at those ranges. Just got a 45/70 by 45 ACP and when warmer weather arrives, I will try it out along with a 35 Remington to 380 ACP recently acquired. I also have them for shotshells. From gauge to gauge. Patterned a 20-gauge shell from a 12-gauge adapter and got full pattern at 20 yards. Same results with 410 in a 20 gauge. Lane Short built some smooth bore adapters from shotgun to handgun calibers and the results were keyholing at 25 yards. Now he is producing rifles adaptors for shotguns gauges that are capable of 5" groups at 25 yards, but I have yet to give them a real trial, so results will vary. Years ago, I acquired a 12 gauge by 22 lr rifled adaptor made of aluminum. Surprising accurary and point of aim at 25 yards.

A thought I have had over the years regarding the poor performance of the 250 Savage adapter is to have some custom adapters made for 25 caliber big game cartridges, like the 250 Savage, 25/06, 257 Weatherby etc. is to have the adapters chamber to 25/20. Now there would be a perfect bore comparison. I will gladly start making these if someone will give me the winning lottery numbers.

I've been doing this exact thing for many years. In most of my hunting rifles I have a short-range bone-buster load that shoots a Barnes of some flavour, a LR load that shoots a Horn AM or ELD or a Berger, and in some rifles I also have a load with Blue Dot powder and light bullets for close-range grouse and small game. With a bit of load development, I can generally make this system work very well. I zero the scope as precisely as possible at 100 m with the LR load, then check POI of the Barnes and BD loads. The Barnes load is often horizontally centered and has a higher POI than the LR load, which is fine since its purpose is to serve as a PBR load. The POI of the BD load is usually within 1-2 MOA of the LR load, and I just make note of this and compensate when using it at <50 m on grouse, rabbit, etc.

I was checking bullets for accuracy a few years ago on a recently built 270 WSM.

I had 130 Nosler Bt;, 130 Swift Scorocco and 130 Swift A-Frames. With the same powder, same powder charge, brass and primer I shot 1 group with 3 of each and it was sub 1"

It is nice to have the option of differing bullet construction shoot to the same POA without having to adjust a scope.

I didn't intend to try to make them to shoot to same POA it just happened.

Who, exactly, is ignorant in this conversation?

Thanks, Brother Balls.

An old article, but an idea the founder of Kifaru was fond. I never got around to trying it though.

https://kifaru.net/blogs/journal/hand-loading-for-all-purpose-use-of-big-game-rifles-written-in-2000

A little of a twist but informative. Thanks for posting!

Has anyone here tried the Hammond Game Getter auxiliary cartridges?

I have several of the Marble's auxiliary cartridges, but have only found that the .30 caliber adapters for the .32 S&W in the 303 SAV, #153, and 30-40 KRAG, #155, worked very well. None of the other Marble's adapters that I've tried have worked nearly as well.

The best small game adapters that I have tried were called ALEX CAPS and, I have been told, were made by a man in Bozeman, MT, by the name of Neil Jermunson. The ALEX CAPS were soft lead pellets that were made in different diameters and weights to match different bore diameters and used a .22 LR cartridge as a power source. They were a good idea and very well executed, but probably came at a time when auxiliary cartridge don't have much market demand.

Loads that zero to the same POI can diverge when the barreled action is removed and replaced from the stock. It’s tempting to check zero for the primary load and call it good but in my experience the secondary may be off.

I do have different loads for the same rifle but it’s for different trips/outings and I only ever carry one type of ammo

Last year, I took a bunch of .257 Roberts rounds to the range. They were mixed test loads, 4 powders and bullets from 75-120grs., different velocities. I shot sitting at 50yds. Six shots went were all in a 3/4" group. I was surprised.

Me, but all with factory ammo. High powered, high BC ammo for bean field hunting, and low recoil ammo for hunting in the timber.

If I go deer hunting I'll probably take either my 25-06 with 117gr bullet, 260 Rem with 129gr bullet or maybe my 6.5x55 with 140gr bullet. Those are the only bullet's I load in those rifles! If I go for antelope it'll probably be with the 25-06 but same 117 gr bullet. Elk? Well I've killed three with both my 6.5x06 and 140gr bullet and three with my 30-06 and 180gr bullet. One killed as well as the other when I did my part! if I was to take my 30-06 deer hunting, I'd use the same 180gr bullet, why? I know exactly how the gun shoots with that bullet and can pick a 180gr load out of a pile of my 30-06 stuff blindfolded, 180gr loads is all I have for it! Same goes for every rifle I have. One rifle and one load. If I want a different load for what ever reason I take a different rifle! One exception I made to that was up in Alaska when I carried my 308 in on a fishing trip. I have never shot anything with a 308 with other than a 165hr spitzer. But in this instance the 308 was all I had with me and I was looking for bear protection. Worked up a 200gr load that gave me 2" groups at 50 yds. Never had to use it! If I had I'm sure that if I did my job that 200r bullet would have done it's! At this point in my life I simply cannot imagine having a few different loads around for any rifle! Of course I also believe that any bullet that will kill a rabbit will also kill a bear and any bullet that will kill the bear has a good chance of killing the rabbit it's just that prudence being to better part of valor, I'd choose with the target animal in mind! I'm quite certain if I took my 260 with the 129gr bullet bear hunting it would work If I did my part. I'm also certain my 30-06 with a 180gr bullet would give me far better shots to shoot! I would not take a 300 mag if I had one because, I shoot my 30-06 better than any magnum! Think, well placed shot!

Most of my rifles are zeroed with one load each. What I have as my criteria for each rifle and the load it uses are #1 a bullet made well enough to preform the task it is called on to do without failures being common and #2 shoot a good enough group to satisfy the real-world mission of that rifle. Once I have the rifle doing the job I want to do with it, it gets that load and that one only. I have a very few exceptions to this rule, but only 2 as of this writing and even in those rifles I have only 2 loads I'd use.

So as examples, 2 of my 270s are set up with 150 gr Nosler Partitions and shoot under MOA. These rifles can be used for all game from killing a coyote or skunk all the way up to killing elk.

My 300 Magnum is zeroed with 200 gr Nosler Partitions and can be used on game from antelope to elk or moose.

My Remington M81 in 300 Savage has stock iron sights and the round groove and big bead on the front will not allow me to shoot targets any smaller then about 3" at 100 yards with my old eyes, so I only demand 3 MOA from this rifle and load because if it did shoot a smaller group I'd never know, and I only use that rifle for shots at 150 yards and closer.

My SAKO 222 is my prairie dog gun so I demand 1/2" and smaller groups from it, and it gives me that degree of accuracy with 52 grain match Hollow Points

My 62 cal flintlock shoots very well and I know what it can do because I have owned it for many years, going back to the days I had outstanding vision. But these days I expect to hit only 3 inch targets at 100 yards because I can't see anything better than that now. But a round ball is not a good long range bullet so I do not fire at game past the range I know I can kill with this rifle.
And the list goes one and on.


When I was a young man and had only 2 rifles I used to load different loads and bullets to do different tasks. But now that I am old and have more rifles I simply take the one I feel like using and each one is zeroed for what I use that gun for.

Good post!!!!!

I load hunting loads for 308’s with 150 grain GameKings, 170 partition bullets made for a 30-30 for suppressor loads and shooting pigs I’ve trapped. The popcorn loads are a lot of fun to shoot.

In my 275Rigby I have used 120gr NBTs for deer and 160gr NPs for moose. Minor scope tweak for the transition.

For many years my BDL in 270 was my only rifle. I hunted everything from varmints to javelina, deer, elk and bears with it. I had only two loads

Varmints: 90g Sierra HPBTs at 3400 fps (mild load)

Big Game: 150g Partitions at 3000 fps (not mild)

Worked on everything I was hunting. Some years would put over a 1000 rounds through it. It's on it's 3rd barrel and my younger son has it now

Thanks for posting this. I was unaware of Patrick's method, but it is very similar to the approach I've used for years. Though my "Big Game" load is a dedicated LR bullet, and my motivation for a load that penetrates deep is more for the ability to crush bone on close-range shots and non-broadside angles (and keep lead fragments out of my meat whilst doing so), and isn't necessarily for self-defence, but very similar approach and reasoning.

I will often develop a load with a premium and then see if I can get a cheaper bullet to hit to the same POI. Lucked out and my .358 Norma I have been playing with shoots the 250 Speer and 250 PT to a nearly identical POI…close enough anything deer or larger would not require a scope adjustment- even out there a ways.

I also have a couple rifles with the open sights regulated for a different load than the scope that sits in QD rings. Pretty easy to switch back and forth with just a shot or two to confirm zero didn’t shift.

I use similar weight bullets in my match rifles, because I occasionally hunt with a match rifle. For example, 105 gr Berger Hybrids for shooting PRS matches with my heavy 243, and 100 grain Sierra Game Kings for deer. Having tested the trajectories it wasn't necessary to change my 100 yard zero from the match loads and the hunting load followed the same data close enough out to the 400 yard limit I impose on using a 243 on deer.

First load development for the 338 RPM is the 160 grain Barnes bullet. Case is shown next to the 284.