Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Weatherby factory ammunition, 117 gr round nose soft point, WHY???

I have always wondered why Weatherby loads the Hornady 117 grain round nose soft point Interlock in 257 Weatherby factory ammo due to its .243 ballistic coefficient? The Hornady 117 grain BTSP has a .391 BC, If using a cup/core bullets why not it?

Anyone know why? Must be good for a lot of folks because they have offered it for many years.

Because once upon a time a 117 round-nose was THE bullet in various 25's. It started with the .250 Savage with the 1-14 rifling twist, and continued with the .257 Roberts due to the conviction in the 1930's (partially promoted by Ned Roberts) that round-nosed bullets were more accurate. This may have been true with the poorly-balanced bullets of the day. Also, there was a wide-spread conviction that round-nosed bullets plowed through brush without deflecting, unlike those new-fangled spitzers.

The .257 Weatherby was Roy's first commercial cartridge, and he simply had to offer a round-nose 117 to those who firmly believed in all those factors. Apparently enough of those customers are still around to keep the load on Weatherby's list.

Thanks MD. You confirmed some of my assumptions. I figure Weatherby wouldn't still offer it if the demand wasn't a profitable venture, so who is buying 257 Weatherby round nose factory ammo? I just don't get it.

Any other 'fire members ever bought the 257WM round nose ammo?

JB is spot on (again). The "blued steel and walnut" crowd is damnably hard to dissuade of their ideas, even to the point (pun intended) of roundnose ammo.

Now, I'm the first to acknowledge that blued steel, walnut, AND roundnose bullets are in fact not only useful but possibly better than other options. But that opinion doesn't extend to roundnose bullets in a megamangleum cartridge like the .257 Weatherby. That's just silly.

Who buys 'em? The guys who shop the night before deer season, when everything else is gone. There are enough of those bozos that sales figures are artificially inflated. Norma looks at the actual sales numbers and thinks, "We have to keep loading THOSE!"

I believe the original twist was 1-12 until the 80's or so. And this factory load carried over because of the older rifles. Did it really matter? Don't know, don't have a 60-70 vintage WBY rifle. The RN shoots lights out in my Remington and everyone else says the same. I mean 3/4" five shot groups at 100. Will it hold to together? All seem to agree it does pretty well. Range, just keep it under 350 and all will be well. The reloaded RN shoots really well in a friends 25-06. Seasonal runs by Hornady make getting them problematic. I still have a couple of boxes of the RN factory loads but I reload "pointy bullets." None out shoot the RN's so far.

Buzz Gillis

That might be also, good catch.

Dad bought a box of that 117 gr round nose Weatherby ammo back in the 1970's for a mule deer hunt - I was never really sure why instead of the pointy-nose stuff. It did shoot well as I recall.

Md's spot on and I still use them while my stock of factory ammo lasts on deer, hogs, etc. My MKV Ultramark loves them and frankly, out to 300 yards, I can't tell the difference

I have the seen the Weatherby ammo and wondered myself. Although I wondered why Remmy and Winny still load a round nosed bullet as well. I was looking at some old ballistics tables from the late 80's and saw that Remmy loaded a pointed 100g load for the Roberts. I wonder why they dropped the 100g load and kept the round nose? Sorry for the topic change.

Dale

I have 2 257 Roys both shoot the round nose the best of any factory loads i ever tried out to 300 yards or so there is not a lot of difference between the spitzer and round nose bullets.

This is the correct answer.

It was not just the .257 either. There were several cartridges that carried over with RN bullets some because of 12" twist which was theorised as the best option with the lighter weight bullet at hypervelocity, which Weatherby promoted in the 40's and 50's and in other cases such as the .340 Weathery which housed 250gn RN bullts (Hornady) simply because Hornday did not offer a spire point at that time.

John,

"Theorized" is the right word.

Two different twist-rate computer programs indicate that a 117--grain spitzer (whether boattail or flat-base) around 1.1 inches long with stabilize in a 1-12 twist. The stability will be somewhat marginal, but it's on the right side of the margin. A friend with an older 1-12 twist Mark V confirms this. But he also hunts only in the West, where higher elevation helps stabilize bullets. (Similarly, SOME 100-grain spitzer 6mm bullets would stabilize in 1-12 twist .244 Remingtons, especially at higher elevations.)

Which is why I suspect the real reason for 117 RN was the fact that it was the traditional bullet for many .25's. Even Nosler made several "semi-pointed" heavyweight bullets for years in various calibers (a 117 .25 among them) because so many shooters were convinced that "heavy" round-nose bullets got through brush better.

What's amazing to me is that Hornady supposedly makes that bullet for 25-35 velocities; and yet it apparently holds up well even at 257WM velocities.

It has the interlokt...Hornady's famous trademark. We've shot 'em in the 250 Savage, 257 Roberts, 257AI, and friends in the 25-06. They've all been accurate and deadly except in those 1-14 twist abominations. Old style Remington Corelokt...same thing. They did w/ the lokt what Nosler did w/ separating the the cores w/the partition. powdr

JB,
Good points. If memory is correct, a couple of things:

Firstly, the 117 grainers in spire point were not available or at least common in the 1:12 days of the German Mark V but there were 120 grain slugs which were better suited to the faster twist. Also, the average handloader thought of bullets in 5 and 10 grain increments more than the odd ball size of 117 grains, for the .257 caliber at least.

The only guys I knew who used that funny bullet weight were the saavy experienced deer hunters who "knew" that Hornady 117 RN was a great and reliable bullet, and you are correct in that the fella's who used the Roberts case, loved that bullet. The Spire points were more common in the late 70's long after the transition to Japan and the 10" twist occured. Perhaps Weatherby simply compromised with the 117 grainer in order to offer a heavier bullet weight for those inclined? They really had no option as they were contracted to Hornady for bullet supply and the 120gn HPBT was not yet created by Joyce Hornady. That bullet incidently, works very well in the .257 Wby case, though I never tried it in the 12" twist.

The other point I wanted to mention was that the big name bullets of the day were different than today. Example: Speer are though of as a reasonable soft fast expanding bullet today. Not so in the early to mid 70's where they were considered the hardest CnC bullet on the market, followed at that time by Hornady (Pre-Interlock) then Sierra which introduced the Game King range in order to generate a hunting bullet image in lieu of their trational target/match/hunting compromises of that era.

It get more interesting the more you reach back compared to today. We had to struggle for every decent load back then. I liked 87gn Hornady's, (Roy's favourite) 100gn Hornady and then I jumped up to 115gn Nosler Partitions which were fabulous.

John

EXACTLY! That one has had me scratching my head for a day or two.

All the background offered up here is great, but I'm with you. I don't get it either -- and I'll stick with my beloved 120 gr NPs, thank you very much.

I shoot the pointy bullets too and the 117g Hornady Interlock is my most accurate hunting bullet (although I use 100g for most deer hunting). Although at that speed, every .257 bullet deflects easily, I have heard many times that deer hunters believe that the round nosed bullets shoot more accurately through brush. Since a lot of deer hunting is done in brush, I think there is a marketing need to cater to this audience if you want to sell ammo. Most deer are shot well inside of 300 yards and at that distance the round nosed bullets perform quite well so there is no harm in using them.

It's one of the best DRT bullets on the market. Can't argue with its success.

Never say never. Shot the 117 RN in my 1-14" twist 99 F 250 Savage this past week. 3 shot clover leafs. Actually shot better than 100 grain Speer spritzers. Surprised the hell out of me, but you don't know till you try. Follow up testing is forth coming of course..........