A few friends and I went out to the National Forest today and emptied a whole lot a brass. Mostly ARs and pistols; I’m always the weirdo with my 100+ year old M1917.
I have been nursing a bad back for the last month and finally felt like I was strong enough to get back out there. Wouldn’t you know that it would be on a Sunday with an Air Quality Index over 200. I know that the smoke is worse south of us down in Oregon, but it was still pretty thick here today.
This morning I loaded up some 30-06 rounds with the Lee 312-155-2R, powder coated w/GC, over 36 grains of Reloder 7. Shooting was done at 60 yards from the prone position off of sandbags. It was going great, three shots all in one hole, epic really for me, and then I pulled shots four and five. In the end I pushed this bullet faster then ever before(by Ian’s estimate 36 grains of RX-7 should be going 2323 fps), with a group size (2 1/8”) that was acceptable to me.
I would love to shoot this load off of a good bench at the range. I think that I could tighten up this group size. They won’t open the ranges back up until we get to “COVID” phase 3.
I also shot two quick groups with the Lyman 311290 over 16gr of 2400. This was an all powder coated bullets
with and without gas check test. The gas checked group was significantly tighter. The without gas check group was larger but not quite a shotgun pattern. I shot these two groups quite fast, and the gas check group was shot second from a hot barrel.
All in all a fun day was had up in the smoky mountains (not capitalized).
Josh