Worked up my first load! 30-06 155gr scenars

Joined
Dec 4, 2018
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I’ve wanted to try reloading for a long time and finally made the jump. My uncle has all the equipment and even dies for my 30-06 so all I needed was the components.

I only own one centerfire rifle, a trusty tikka t3 30-06 that I got over 12 years ago. It’s been an awesome gun for me but really prefers light, 150gr bullets driven at pretty slow speed for whatever reason. My goal was to reload a round that was accurate and would hold enough energy to effectively kill a deer at 500 yards.

I did some research and found enough guys touting the lapua scenar 155gr bullets to give them a try. The BC looked great and my gun seems to prefer lighter bullets anyways. Powder is really limited in stores right now but I found some Ramshot Hunter that seemed like it would produce good velocities for me. I ran out of case capacity at only 61 grains (as far as I could tell—when I shook the case nothing moved in there). This was 4-5 grains below max...not sure what to do about that. Remington brass maybe has less case volume?

Settled on a charge of 59.4gr, seated about .010 off the lands. 2970fps.

Had some mishaps including failing to Debur the case necks which resulted in some weird shots on paper, and then realizing that a significant amount of powder was leaking around my funnel when I was loading charges. Rookie mistakes...but in the end it was awesome to get a load that looks like a winner!! I’ve got good accuracy, reasonable muzzle velocity of 2970fps, and a load that doesn’t kick too hard. Time to practice!

6 shot group 100 yards
08B834BB-1BE0-4D2A-B476-B00A6234F51E.jpeg

Ballistic chart, going to verify next week.
BB37A528-5F4A-4341-91A2-D70BDE9981D5.png
 
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