Thread: The Importance of Records for Older Handloaders

Originally Posted by csmiffy

well they are also important for other reasons.
At good friends a few months back. He has taken up the long-range/dialling thing a little.
He has a Remington 700 300 win mag with a PITA 1-13 twist that he is hitting fridge size targets out past 1000m and a Sako 308 that he has dual loads for and uses on hares etc but won't do that under 250m as its too easy lol.
Anyhoo, the weekend i was there he had a shot at a hare at something like 275. Prone on a bipod with the camera rolling. Got the rangefinder out and dialed it up.
Hit the hare lying in the grass through its front legs and grazed the chest.
He was a little perplexed where it shot but still got it.
We also had a crack with his 300. All set up from the benge, got the rangefinder out and it was out past 600.
got his app cranking to work out the dialling and set her up.
It was quite low. we got it all done and i did a couple of good shots and happy campers.
well the low shot, mainly on the 300 was niggling him big time.
Went through everything and finally after going through his notes, he found it. The loads in the 308 and the 300 was with a different batch of powder which his notes suggested was a tiny bit slower. Would make no difference to a deer out to 400, but on a hare close to 300 and targets at 600+ makes a big difference.
No safety issues at all, but never would've had found it without the bookwork.

Greetings @csmiffy,
This is the reason that I note the powder batch in my load notes and chronograph comparison loads for each new batch. Mostly the difference is minor but with the 6.5 x 55mm load mentioned earlier velocity for a later batch of AR2209 was 85 fps faster than older batches, equivalent to adding 1.5 to 2 grains of powder. Same loads, same cases, same day but much higher velocity and pressure.
Regards Grandpamac.