Winchester loads

[James B]

I was getting my wifes rifle ready for deer season the other day. The last several years I have had her using a box of factory Winchester silver tip 100 grain bullets in her 250 Savage. Buy the loading manuals most loads of 100 grain bullets show 2800-2900 fps. I run a few of them over the Chronograph while checking out my handloads and was suprised to see them average just 2601 fps Thses loads have been killing deer light the bolt of lighting they talk about. My loads with 100 Nosler BT' s and H414 average about 2988 fps. I have took several reading on factory Federal loads and they seem to run a little closer to what the manuals read. I do realize that there are a lot of very old Savage 250 lever guns around. I suppose Winchester keeps this in mind when load ing for these older calbers. Just found it interesting.

[Vapodog]

That' s the value of hand loading and chronographs!!

[thndrchiken]

My experience with factory ammo is that they very rarely chrony at what they claim. Not all factory loads fit into that category though, Hornady and Federal usually come close to the spec.

[Deleted User]

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[James B]

As for me I never accused them of lieing. Thier ammo does not state a fps claim at all. I was more impressed with the way the 100 grain bullet at 2600 fps dispatched all the deer it has hit. My chronograph does read a little different on clear or cloudy days. It states in my manual that it works best on cloudy and partly cloudy days. It says that bright sunny days are not as good as the unit can pick up the reflection of the bullet rather than the shadow. We had 4 chronographs set up one day and I was suprised at how close they come to duplicating each other. Most loading manuals work up thier loads with long pressure barrels and thier reading are a poor reflection of what you can expect in a factory barrel. I have had four units over the years starting about thirty years ago with the old chrony with the paper screens. A good chronograph is pretty accurate as we have checked them out against the ones in the Ballistic lab a friend of mine works in for Speer. My unit can vary up to 100 fps with different sky conditions.

[hardluck71]

Buying factory ammo is like buying a new car. You know what it is suppose to be but it don' t always turn out that way. But reloading is like building a car yourself. You have a pretty good idea as to what the bullet will do.

Now, I have never Chronographed a car nor have I ever parallel parked a bullet but I think the comparison is fairly sound.

Good shooting.

[eldeguello]

Here recently, I' ve also noticed that a lot of handload data in recent manuals doesn' t produce the velocities that are published in the manuals either, unlike in previous years. For example, Barnes says that 77 grains of IMR 4064 will give 3150 FPS with their 210-grain X bullet in the .375 H&H Magnum in a 24" barrel. I have found that it actually produces only 2900 in mine with a 24" barrel. This is a greater difference than can be accounted for just by a different lot number of powder. I realize that all rifles are individuals, which may explain this big discrepancy, but I have noticed similar things happening with other cartridges and rifles lately. In the past, I had found my guns performed pretty close to what the manuals said you could expect....

[James B]

It may be just a fluke or something but my 257 Roberts read almost Ideical to whats published in the Hornady manual. I didn,t notice in thier data what kind of rifle they were using. It seems like Hornady uses more standard rifles to gather thier data. Most of the others use pressure barrels usually quite a bit longer than real rifle barrels.