Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Reduced .308 loads

I was looking up some reduced loads for a .308 win using 180 grain cast bullets and came across a site where one said to use 5 grains of W231 to achieve a velocity of 1000 fps.

No mention of filler, would you even consider doing up such a load?

I'm curious as I want to try a "quiet" load with a .308 and my gas checked 180 grain cast bullets I have and don't want to blow my gun up or get a bullet stuck in the barrel.

I would do some more research on W231 before I actually loaded it, but I would consider it.

I have loaded several rounds with 5-10 grains of unique to achieve 22 LR balistics, but never in a .308.

I have with things like .22 Hi-power, .22 hornet, .30-30 and other such lower pressure rounds. They do work well for deer in urban settings.

Ok, I have found where someone said to never use a filler of any kind in a bottleneck cartridge as the filler will technically become a "bullet" in itself and create high pressures when trying to be forced through the shoulders and neck of the cartridge.

I think Rocky Raab has a great article on this. Maybe he'll chime in. I've used Unique and Red Dot but I always set up a measurement stick and go thru each case to ensure same height of powder as marked on the stick after charging to verify no double charges.

Not sure about the 231, and don't have any data, but Lyman calls for 12.2gr Unique as a starting charge with a 180gr cast bullet for 1425fps. This may sound strange, but work carefully down from there and I'm sure you could reach your +/- 1,000 fps. Hodgdon in their 2010 annual manual (and maybe others) shows a charge of 8.0gr of Clays powder with a 168gr jacketed bullet for a velocity of 1,060fps. I would think a charge slightly less than this would work well with your 180 cast bullet, but a call to Hodgdon would probably be a good idea to confirm.
Reduced loads are lots of fun to shoot, and are addictive.
Good Luck,
Rick

PS As already mentioned, be cautious to only put one charge in each case.

Hodgdon has 3 reduced loads shown on their website - Trail Boss, Titegroup, and Clays. The latter two are subsonic loads.

Trail Boss is probably what I'd try as it is very "fluffy" and likely will not need a filler

Thx, one mentioned start loading each case starting with an upside down case and after loading (obviously) keep it upright until loading bullet.

I'd be looking at Trail Boss, somewhere around 8 to 10grs.

5744 is also a nice powder for cast shooting, but you'd likely need to run in the 20-30 grain range.

Hmmmm...

Trail boss???

I was actually thinking about reduced loads in the 308 again yesterday, but with 170 grain flatpoint jacketed pills meant for the 30-30. No real reason other than I want an alternative load that shoots to the crosshairs at 25 yards (with my BG load zero) for shooting small game, while hunting big game, without turning a grouse into an un-edible mess. I was thinking it'd work ok if I could get the velocity down around 1000-1200 FPS.

A guy gets tired of eating Mountain House on backpack trips

You can do some fun stuff with Trail Boss and it fills cases in a hurry.

I tried Hodgdon's website, and their PDF file was corrupt The old load data center was a no workee either.

Do they actually post data for what I want to do?

I was playing with some Hornady 220gr RN and Unique in the 308Win.

10.8gr Unique made 1050 fps, but they were a bit wobbly at 1/12 twist. 1/10 twist should work well.

Unique or Trailboss would probably be two great candidates. Data is published, but can be difficult to find. I have the Lyman 4th Edition Cast bullet handbook and it has lots of data for lead bullets. The advantage to Trail Boss is that it's fluffy and no concern for double charging. There are rules about the charges acceptable with Trailboss published by Hodgdon. The only one I can remember is that you can load a case full as long as it's not compressed. The concern with jacketed bullets is to be sure you don't get so slow as to stick a bullet in the barrel.

Rick

Look at one of the cast bullets sites.

or Lyman Cast Bullet manual... loads of good info there, pressure tested etc..

Townsend Whelen once told of using 18 grains of SR-4759 with a 150 grain FMJ out of his '06 at 1800 fps for just the same thing. I would think 16 grains from a .308 would be close. Just don't go below 1500 fps with a jacketed bullet or risk lodging a bullet in the barrel. Cast bullets don't have this disadvantage.

YUP!

But keep in mind, all things being equal (Caliber - BBl Length- Bullet weight- atmospheric conditions)a subsonic is not much more quiet AT THE POINT OF ORIGIN than a supersonic.

Its the lack of "CRACK" and the lessening of the actual "BOOM" that can be heard at a distance that a subsonic brings to the table.