Thread: 223 on deer

Greetings All,
I can see one big fat pressure sign that was ignored and that was the velocity. 2,950 fps with the 73 grain projectile! The only data I can turn up for this projectile tops out at a little over 2,850 fps in a 22" barrel. Before most of us were born Julian Hatcher wrote in the NRA Journal that primer appearance was practically worthless for judging pressure. He had spent his whole military career working in internal and external ballistics. I am not getting at you @zeropak as you are likely following advice of others. I found some data for AR2206H with the 75 grain Hornady HPTBT which gave a max load of 22 grains of AD2206H for a velocity of 2,588 fps. This is closer to what I would expect.
There was an excellent vid on here a we while back where some handloaders ran the loads in a .308 well up in the danger zone. They were well above 80,000PSI before primers showed signs of stress. After tinkering with all manner of pressure guessing techniques over the last 50 years of my handloading I have formed the opinion that specific load data for the projectile and powder plus the use of a chronograph is the only reliable way of estimating pressure.
Regards Grandpamac.