Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Express Rifles and Big Bores Only 500 Jeffrey Load Development

My last .500 A2 loads were 120 gr IMR 4350 behind a 600 gr Woodleigh bullet. My rifle weighs 11.5 lbs empty, 12.0 full, and I confess to having no real desire for more recoil. I'll chrono the load when I get a chance, but it's supposedly nowhere near max.

As the recoil gets more and more powerful, the follow up shots get slower and slower. I try to shoot in pairs at the range. By this I mean that I try to double tap when practicing, firing the second shot as quickly as I can. I think this does two things: it forces me to pay attention and hold on, and it makes me more aware of the cost of recoil in terms of time. It also makes me pay attention where I put my feet. I also try very hard not to get in habit of admiring my shot and the automatic firing of a second shot seems to help.

Depending on how I feel, I'm good for 12-15 full tilt loads per shooting session. Some days I feel better, other days my head starts aching after 10 or so. Off of shooting sticks, I've shot a number of groups with all holes touching out to 40 yards with a 1x optical sight; with a 2 3/4 sight it's even easier.

Because it's just not possible to shoot very many rounds accurately through the big gun in one session, I try to focus on quality shooting rather than quantity shooting. I'd rather to 4 or 5 drills well, than blast away 20 or 25 times. That said, 535 gr bullets at about 2100 fps are a pleasure to shoot and it's no trick to go through 25-30 in a practice session.

Earlier someone stated that there was a big difference between 600 gr bullets at 2100 fps vs those same bullets at 2300 fps, in terms of recoil. I couldn't agree more; the extra 200 fps greatly increase the perception of recoil.

I've been to Africa once for plains game, and I'd very much like to go back for elephant (thus the .500 A2), but my plans are on hold until my daughter graduates from college; first things first.

You could always try the powder IMR-4320, gave me very good results in a .458-Lott and .475 mag.

I would email Geoff at Woodleigh and ask him for starting and max load data for H4895. It's very accurate and clean burning in my 500 Jeffrey. I have to believe you would get similar velocity to what you're getting now with your 600g bullets with significantly less recoil (maybe 10 ft lbs?). Of course if you were going for max velocity it wouldn't work for you, and each rifle tends to have it's own "favorite powder".

Think about this when you have time. Remember before smokeless powder there were lots of elephant killed with bullets traveling along at 1400 fps that killed vary well without a huge up roar from hunters. So would a better bullet today traveling along at 1900-2100 fps do any poorer?

I went with the IMR 4350 because **supposedly** you can't stuff enough in a case to cause excessive pressures with a 600 gr bullet. Since I've been too busy doing other things to get out the chronograph, I felt that was the best sanity check against unsafe loads. There's .500 A2 loading data out there, but a great deal of it is word of mouth, which calls for a certain amount of caution, and, in my opinion, a chronograph as safety check. Previously, I used 108 gr of RL15, which is also reasonably under max, but I was uncomfortable inching upward with a powder which I know can be overloaded. I don't mind testing upward as long as I have a chrono. The .500 A2 isn't a super-exotic like a .577 T-Rex or similar, but it's not like there's one in every deer camp, and I don't know how standard the chambers / throats are, etc. My rifle is an A2, so I would assume that it is as standard as possible, but you never know ...

Anyway, my choice of IMR 4350 was a form of protection against myself.

From what I've read, the African ivory hunters at the dawn of the smokeless age dumped the old black powder guns as quickly as they could. Most of what I've read suggested that the black powder guns were marginal and had unpredictable results on elephant.

I never tried 4350 in my 500 Jeffrey. In my 350 rigby I loaded both Varget and 4350 to get 2700 fps w/ 250's, and the recoil with the 4350 was signifigantly greater then that of the Varget. I've also loaded VVN550 in the 458 lott, and recoil was signifigantly stronger then that of RL 15 or Varget. My thinking is the slower powders develop their peak pressure later in the firing process and have higher pressure when the bullet leaves the barrel, which results in the rifle rotating more the stock slapping you silly.

100 gr of RL15 or Varget is a good starting load with 600's and should get you ~2200 fps. I'd expect recoil will be much less than that of 4350. I also think you'll run into recoil issues before pressure issues.

IMO the recoil of the .470 loaded with a 500 gr. bullet at 2245 FPS is horrendous but that was the old Butch Searcy regulation load..I found out that Butchs rifles will shoot most bullets to the same POI within reason, so I loaded mine down to a 500 gr. Woodleigh at 2020 FPS and it was much nicer on this old body..

The surprise came with how will it just dumped those big Dagga boys over, I couldn't tell any difference in the two loads so I stuck with the milder of the two and shot a lot of buffalo with it...

I suggest that the 500 Jefferys would do the same thing but even better, a 600 gr. bullet at 2000 FPS would be like the hammer of Thor, I promise you that....There are times when bigger isn't better, maybe more than we think!

Being able to see your target played the big role, getting away from the smoke was a major advantage.