Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors reloading data for 303 savage

I usually stick to 2.52” coal. A bit longer like 2.6” probably would work fine, but I don’t think I’ve ever needed it. My 303’s are plenty accurate as is with factory length.

Agreed 100%... no need to go long with rn/fn bullets.

Mine are just long because of ogive with pointy bullets. It was a bit of a hokey pokey fiddling around to find which bullets I could get to fit in the mag and feed well, and which ones I couldn't with that long case neck. 30-30 actually lends itself a bit better to them in a 99 than 303, but I did find a few that work well in the 110-130 grain range.

Always meant to try some lightweight spitzers in the 303, never got around to it. Tried some 150's, but you lose too much powder space by the time the bullet is seated far enough back to fit in the magazine. A 110gr spitzer would be a nice varmint cartridge in a 303.

Mine feeds and shoots the 110 Sierra Varminter, 110 Nosler ETip, and 125 Sierra Pro Hunter very well. The Speer 130 hollow points shoot well, but they feed very poorly. None of them are very hot loads, velocities chronoed between 2100-2250fps. My rifle seems to like them best in the 2150fps range. IMR4320, Accurate 4064, IMR 3031 all give me good results.

I prefer 3031 for the ETips over the other two because you're not heavily compressing the powder, makes consistent seating easier. All 3 powders work well with the other bullets.

The Barnes 110 TTSX, Hornady 125 HP and Speer 125 TNT bullet profiles are too long to get good neck tension while still fitting short enough for the magazine length.

My rifle has a really oversized chamber and throat, so the lighter bullets are the ticket for low recoil fun loads for me. Cast won't shoot in it at all, and mild loads with heavier bullets get a lot of blowback and brass sooting because the cases don't seal in that huge chamber with light loads.

Anybody know how to work a Lee Full length sizing die to only size the neck and not the body of the brass? I would like to extend my case life as much as possible but nobody makes a neck sizer for 303sav.

I am anticipating that after 2 or 3 reloads I will need to bump the shoulder back down a bit....

Is that just a matter of not pushing the case all the way thru the die? Only putting say the top 1/3 of the case thru the die or until you feel a touch of resistance then backing out?

I've not had much a brass issue with FL sizing. I'm getting 7-8 firings before they neck split on PPU 303 brass, and that's with a massively oversized chamber and not annealing it.

Buffaloarms had PPU 303 brass marked down to less than $9 a bag if you bought 5+ a while back, not sure if they're still fire saling them like that or not. I bought enough to last the rest of my life.

That's pretty much how I do it, just the top 2/3 or so. Never bought a dedicated neck sizing die. Never had to bump the shoulder back either. The only additional protocol I follow is to run the .303 Savage case neck into an M die that expands the neck and flares the mouth to accept the .310" diameter cast bullets I use. Leaving that bottom portion of the neck unsized helps to position the bullet straight into the throat/leade of the rifle in which the case had previously been fired in.

The only reason to full length size is if you're feeding multiple guns with the same chambering, and even that's not a guarantee that you'll have to.

In the end what matters most is getting the bullet in straight. How you accomplish that is up to you. The best device I ever bought to increase the statistical accuracy of my ammo is a Sinclair concentricity gauge with a dial indicator. A real eye opener that thing was. It set me on a path to suss out the deficiencies in my handloading protocols. Worth its weight in gold, IMO.