Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles Reduced 308 Winchester Loads

I recently purchased a Ruger Compact American in .308. Looking for reduced recoil loads for a young shooter.

H4895 and Varget for powder.

Hornady, Winchester, Remington 150gr for bullets.

Anyone have any pet loads ?

Thanks
Flyer

The general rule is with most powders you can safely go no lower than 80% of max, but supposedly some powders allow you to go lower.

By "reduced" do you mean near full power for whitetails or for plinking/practice? The total weight of the ejecta is what mostly determines recoil, so choosing a lighter bullet than a 150 would be a good start.

Speer 100gr Plinkers with a small charge of Blue dot or similar fast powder would make a great range load. Patrick Smith has some reduced loads in an essay on reloading over at the Kifaru site. You might PM Seafire as he is the resident expert here on reduced loads if he doesn't see this.

Are you able to get other powders?

I use H4198 with 150/155 grain bullets to assemble a very accurate load that approximates 30-30 ballistics. It's useable for deer at moderate range, and the recoil and blast is substantially reduced from regular 308 levels.

A guy I work with wants to load heavy bullets in a 308 for subsonic loads ( 180 - 220 grs ) We started talking about Blue Dot loads. I mentioned some of Seafire's work. Maybe he'll join in with info on any data he might have developed and chronographed with heavy bullets in a .308Win with Blue Dot.

If recoil is the issue, you could go with light for caliber bullets at standard powder charges. Like a 130 gr TTSX traveling 2900 or 3000 fps...

My tikka loves 130 TTSX's with about 47 gr of TAC I believe. But you could reduce it and find an accuracy node at a lower speed..

That approach leaves full strength muzzle blast in place. I've observed that new shooters often react negatively to blast as much as recoil.

H4895 is a good way to go along with lighter bullets

4198 is better in this application.

Flyer, Look in the Speer books, there are loads using 4227 and 4759 and I'm sure that there are 4198 loads somewhere. Also look on Hodgdon's site, there should be H-4895 reduced loads also.-Muddy

I should have provided additional information .

Load is intended for black bear, under 75 yards. Shooter is already using cast bullets, with unique . Can obtain 130 gr Barnes but didn't feel comfortable loading at reduced velocity, wasn't confident they would expand. The goal was 150gr at 2400 to 2500 fps ex the 18" barrel.

I have already calculated some loads with H4895 using 300 Savage data combined with Hodgdons 60% of max load criteria .

Thanks for all the feedback, will put some together and get out to the range.

Flyer

I suggest using a "hot" primer with the reduced H4895 charges.

H4895 with Nosler 125 Ballistic Tips.

The 125 accubond has a nice thick jacket AND real thick solid base...I'd bet it would perform awesome at a 2400-2700 fps impact. Then again just a plain vanilla 150 horn spire point would too.

A good .30-30 bullet at .30-30 velocity has been doing that job well for a long time.

I can't see that either bullet or game would know any different if you matched top .30-30 velocity with about 41 of H4895 for a 150 in .308.

I've done similar to mimic the .35R in .350RM and .35Wh with good results.

You should be able to do similar and better with the slightly smaller case.

Only smallbore magnums get finicky with reduced loads, with good ones in 6.5RM and 7RM still eluding me.

Max load with Blue Dot, for bullet weights of 110 to 165 grains is 22.5 grains ( work up in your rifle )...

Sweet spot in a lot of 308s seem to be between 18 and 20 grains...

I've got some 125 gr NBTs and H4895, just for thist purpose, in my son's 308 Ruger American. I'm anticipating 300 savage speeds with the 125, and slightly better than 30-30 speeds with the barnes 30-30 bullet to have approx the same recoil. ...have to get to work to know for sure.