Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Anyone with 357 Max experience?

I used a .357 Max on my Encore frame for deer hunting in Iowa when I lived there. It was a great option to avoid using a shotgun and have great accuracy and cheap practice. I used very few jacketed bullets in mine, as I love to cast boolits and picked up a couple of ideal molds - a Lyman 358627 215 gr. checked and lubed, and Ranch Dog's 359-190-RF Both hammered deer with authority and I could run them at 1600-1800 fps, depending on the load, from a 15" barrel w/brake. I used RL7, 4227, and 1680 for powders. I've still got the Ranch Dog mold, sold the Lyman. If you get the barrel and want to try some cast boolits, send me a PM and I can hook you up. 100 yd MOA groups were the norm from a bench, scoped, of course.

Sel,

The reason I inquired about cast bullets was "shortleade" spoke of penetration issues with jacketed bullets. Using the velocities he mentioned it seemed to me he could sub a hard cast checked bullet without encountering leading.

The WikiLeaks summation regarding the demise of the 357 Max fingered hot-loaded 125 gr and lighter bullets at 2300-2400fps were the real culprits for flame cutting pistol top straps.

While most here on the Fire would be primarily interested in 158gr and heavier bullets for deer sized game, my infatuation is for off-season plinking of 15+lb snapping turtles that happen to be over-populating a little 6 acre trophy bass lake.

My experience with this goes back well over 40 years, when I stuffed some 158gr 357 bullets into .358 Winchester brass and declared war on the turtle population. Holy Crap. Until you've witnessed the devastation, (which resembles little hand-grenades), simply has to be seen to be believed. Sure a .22 short would do the job but this is like shooting canon's at un-opened coke cans. Perverse? Maybe, but equates to prairie dog sniping where there ain't any prairie dogs.

Those flame-cutters in a rifle barrel ought to be purty dern fun!


DMc