Rossi Rifleman

I'm curious as to what others consider to be acceptable group size when using cast bullets in a hunting rifle? In my Rio Grande 30/30, I can pretty much load near max levels if I'm willing to accept 4" groups at 100 yards. I know that's good enough to hit a deer out to 150 yards, but if I drop the velocity by 300 fps my group size drops to 1 1/2" at 100 yards. I know from talking with Ranch Dog that I need to harden my bullets and that will help me go faster. This is where my anal side gets in the way of reality, I don't know when to be satisfied with the size of my groups.

I tend to measure groups by MOA so that the statement of a particular load is relative to any distance. I consider anything more than 2.5 MOA unacceptable. My determination is usually made from a bench with a minimum of 5 shots.

Thanks, that gives me an actual number to try for.

Yep, Ranch Dog is dead on. The harder you make your alloy, the hotter the round can be...depending on the bullet design...and still be accurate. Of course, you loose muzzle energy with a harder bullet that you might want to retain if you are shooting animals where penetration at distance isn't the main concern. So keep that in mind. If the bullet is too hard and no hollow point to help, you get a nice little 30 call pass through which may or may not leave you a blood trail to follow. Sometimes, little hole in, big hole out is MUCH better. ;~)

Keep this in mind too. This may get an argument from some, but testing bares out that stainless steel guns are never as accurate as carbon steel and that is amplified with cast bullets. So if your gun is SS, a 1 1/2" group may be as good as it gets no matter what you shoot.

But to be honest, a 1 1/2" group at 100 yards is pretty dang good for ANY 30/30 lever action with any ammo...period. Heck, a 5mph gust of wind can quite literally effect a 30/30 round that much at a 100 yards. I know I'd be happy with that kind of grouping with my Marlin. Heck, a 2 1/2" group is pretty good for it, depending on the ammo!

So yep, you may be being a little to anal. LOL

Ranch Dog wrote:I tend to measure groups by MOA so that the statement of a particular load is relative to any distance. I consider anything more than 2.5 MOA unacceptable. My determination is usually made from a bench with a minimum of 5 shots.

I probably should have added that this is based on my need of shooting whitetails and hogs with a variety of cartridges out to 200 yards.

Centaur1,
Have you considered using gas checks? These will allow you to ramp up the speed without having to harden the bullets.

Coop 45 wrote:Centaur1,
Have you considered using gas checks? These will allow you to ramp up the speed without having to harden the bullets.

I'm using gas checks and my bullet is the Ranch Dog TLC311-165-RF(b). My air cooled bullets are 11-12 bhn and I'm getting close to 1900fps before accuracy drops off to an unacceptable level. Once the accuracy starts to drop off it does so very quickly, and group size is not linear as you move the target farther away. If I do what they suggest and keep my velocity at the starting levels that are posted in reloading manuals, I have no problem keeping groups at 1.5 moa at any distance. As I push my loads closer to the limits of my alloy, I can still get 1.5 moa at 50 yards, but groups will be 2.5 moa at 100 yards. When I load to the maximum levels I'm lucky to get 4 moa at 50 yards, and over 8 moa at 100 yards. I'm in the process of water cooling my bullets so that I can drive them faster and still get decent groups.

When it comes to shooting cast bullets there are many opinions on how to cast and load them. It would be easy to load them to 1400 fps using Unique, and it works just fine and kills many deer every year. I'm determined to get "acceptable" accuracy from full power loads. I doubt that I will get groups as small as with jacketed bullets, I'm just trying to figure out what to realistically expect from my rifle.

Boy, I have a lot of work to do. With my 357, I am unable to get 6 inch groups at 100 yards. I must be doing something very wrong. My load is 14 grains of 4227 topped off with a 150 grain Lyman bullet.

Now that I am casting my own 45-70 boolits my groups are improving, plus I am also improving technique as I practice more. These I shot today at 50 yards with my H&R Handi Rifle with a 1-4x scope, Shooting the Accurate 46-365RG (Ranch Dog boolit) with "light loads" of IMR3031 (37 to 40gr), and using 1/2" foam as a filler. These were light recoil "and" accurate, at about 1380 fps per QuickLoad:









I need more "practice", but I hope to one of these days get a ragged hole

Will

This is looking good!