Are we over loading when we should be under loading? 6UM<300WMS?

[Wprinkle]

Well hunting season is over for me so now time to obsess and over think.. I am relatively new to wildcats +- 6 years. All my wildcats require fire forming. I now fire form most everything even if not blowing out shoulders just because I believe it helps.. not enough to matter but I like it lol.

So to the point. I am sure you all have noticed as well as I have that "fire forming" loads are stupid accurate and normally I get a SD of less than 3-4FPS over 60-100 rounds. And groups under 1 MOA and most of em way tighter and those groups hold true at long range. (all from prone with bags no timer) So what If we have been going at this bass awkwards?

RokSlide for the most part is in the camp of getting the most acceptable wound channel we can out of the lightest recoiling delivery system we can. So we have taken "small" cartridges and hopped em up to achieve this. What if we take large cartridges and castrate em ie fire forming loads to achieve the same thing?

PROS: Longer barrel life, longer brass life, would we see the stupid good accuracy and tight SD (even though Form proved it is pretty much irrelevant for field shooting/hunting), Easier for new reloaders and non wildcatters to achieve.

CONS: nobody wants to walk around with a 300 RUM that performs like a 243 lol,

Yep, pole-vaulting over mouse turds but hay season is over, calving hasn't started and Im bored....

EDIT; That is supposed to be 300WSM not 300WMS

 

[longrangelead]

great, thanks!
another rabbit hole!

There does seem to be something to that within reason.
Most handloaders have probably found pushing most cartridges too hard degrades accuracy.

 

[Wprinkle]

great, thanks!
another rabbit hole!

There does seem to be something to that within reason.
Most handloaders have probably found pushing most cartridges too hard degrades accuracy.

I really noticed it with the fast 6mm. Maxed out I was basically getting two groups. A first shot/ cold bore group and a follow up shot group. Both extremely tight groups and when combined still sub 2MOA but I backed off .5 grains and poof all that went away.. And as you said when it was maxed out there was a noticeable accuracy degradation.

 

[ckleeves]

It’s a funny thing, I think most reloaders know the advantage of not running max +.5 and yet a whole bunch of them get caught up in it even while knowing better, myself included.

When I screw a new barrel on I tell myself “I’ll be happy with 2900 out of this barrel” and then 8 hours later after 30 rounds I’m thinking “Man, with XX powder I bet this baby will hit 3050!”

My usual technique is to start with a very achievable goal, exceed it by a lot, trash some brass, maybe pull some bullets just for fun, come to my senses and back way way down to my original goal and then happily shoot the barrel for the rest of its life at the happy load after killing 40% of the barrel life and ruining a couple hundo in brass for a few extra yards of minimum expansion velocity that I’m not gonna use anyway.

PS- This is an advanced technique I don’t recommend for anybody but the extremely simple minded like myself.