So it's been a while since I've been on the forums, busy summer. I upgraded the reloading room and got some new goodies. I've been getting interested in accurate shooting out of my TC venture 7mm rem magnum. I have 1 box or winchester brass and got 100 pieces of 'once fired' brass to practice with. This is my first rifle brass I have tried to load so I didn't want to buy new brass until I perfected my loading technique. Once I got that down I started working up some loads in the winchester brass.

I'm using a rock chucker press, Lee 4 die set, rcbs powder measure, rcbs 505 scale, H1000 powder, CCI magnum rifle primers, and I started with some sierra 140gr spitzer bullets because that's what the gun shop had. I tumbled the brass first because I like shiny brass then since it was already shot in my rifle and fire formed to the chamber I used the neck resizer die. Then I cleaned the primer pockets. That's pretty much all I did to the brass.

Lyman lists the load for a 140gr jacketed soft point at 66 - 72.7 gr of h1000 with 72.7 being the most accurate load. I decided to start at the bottom and since I only had 20 brass I made 4 rounds of each load which gave me 4 shots each of 66, 67, 68, 69, and 70gr. With my box of ammo in hand I went out to the range.

I did my testing at 100 yards. I'm currently using a cheap chinese 3-9x scope that came on the rifle and a front rest for the rifle. After my tests here is the best group I got...

load.jpg

I noticed during my testing that the first 3 shots would group close with the 4th one flying away. All I can figure is by the 4th shot the barrel has heated up making the shot less accurate.

So for now I decided to use the 67gr of H1000. I proceeded to prep all my once fired brass first tumbling, then full length resizing. During reloading I had 2 case necks split while seating the bullet leading me to believe that some of this brass has been fired more than once. This is also why I didn't test out the max loads. I got 50 rounds loaded and went out to the range for some fun.

These were my groupings at 100 yards. Notice how the first 3 shots grouped nice but the ones after seemed to spread out. In the future my load testing with have to include a cooldown after every 3 shots.

sight in.jpg

So after my 100 yard shooting I decided to take a hike and put targets at 200 and 300 yards (the farthest the range at my sportsman goes). At 200 yards I got this...

200 yds.jpg

Not too bad for just a front rest. At 300 yards I found the bullet drops about 13" and didn't even hit the paper.

In all I'm happy so far. For a hunting rifle I'm confident I can hit my target in the kill zone out to 200 yards which around here 200 yards is about the longest shot you would get.

Now I am always looking to improve so some of the things I am looking to do is make my ammo more consistent and precise. I'm going to buy some new brass. I'm also going to try some different bullet styles and weights. To get more accurate feedback on my loads I need to get a chrono as the 3 shot group method will only tell me so much. And I would like to get some kind of rest like a lead sled or at least some sandbags for the forearm and butt of the rifle to sit on to help eliminate as much of the human factor as possible. Also maybe a better scope. My goal is 3" or smaller groups at 300 yards. Then work at my skills to put those shots in the X ring at 300 yards.

But as for now I have a pretty nice hunting rifle that I think has to potential to do what I want.