{"id":15410,"date":"2021-12-24T06:10:42","date_gmt":"2021-12-24T14:10:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/?p=15410"},"modified":"2022-09-15T19:22:04","modified_gmt":"2022-09-16T02:22:04","slug":"300-weatherby-recipes-an-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/2021\/12\/24\/300-weatherby-recipes-an-update\/","title":{"rendered":"300 Weatherby Recipes: An Update"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been on a tear the last few weeks, playing with the Mk V 300 Weatherby and developing loads for it.\u00a0 \u00a0I developed loads with cast bullets and with jacketed bullets, and at reduced-load levels and at factory ammo levels.<\/p>\n

The Internet weenies advise going hotter with this cartridge to get better accuracy, but I don\u2019t want more accuracy that badly (don’t get me wrong; I like accuracy, but not at the expense of this kind of recoil).\u00a0 The recoil with this cartridge is severe. I shot some sub-minute-of-angle groups with the 180 grain Remington jacketed softpoint bullets. I also had a few larger groups, but I\u2019m chalking that up to the wind and me still being a bit recoil sensitive. For me, it\u2019s close enough to call it done.<\/p>\n

All groups presented here were at 100 yards from my Mk V Weatherby.\u00a0 It has a walnut stock and a 26-inch barrel.\u00a0 I bought this rifle about 10 years ago but I had not shot it much until recently.\u00a0 I have a 4×16 Weaver on this rifle and all groups were with the scope at 16X.\u00a0 The scope is no longer available, but it is a good one.<\/p>\n

This Mk V initially had a terrible trigger. It was creepy and gritty, and it was so bad it surprised me.\u00a0 I was thinking about spending another $200 on a Timney trigger and then a funny thing happened:\u00a0 The trigger suddenly and spontaneously improved.\u00a0 It’s about a three-pound trigger now with zero creep.\u00a0 \u00a0Don’t ask me how or why.\u00a0 Maybe there was some grit in the trigger, or maybe there was a burr somewhere in the mechanism.\u00a0 \u00a0Whatever it was, it’s gone.<\/p>\n

I now use a Caldwell shoulder pad for the full bore stuff. It helps tremendously with recoil, but it is probably degrading my shooting position because of the unnatural stretch to get a good scope picture and cheek weld. Even with that pad, though, I still get kissed by the scope on occasion.\u00a0 \u00a0The rifle likes to let me know who\u2019s the boss.<\/p>\n

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The Caldwell shoulder pad really helped tame the 300 Weatherby’s recoil.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Cast bullets are okay for light loads and practicing, but to keep the groups below 3 inches, I had to use a bore brush between every group. If I didn\u2019t bore brush it every three shots, the groups opened up.\u00a0 If I use a bore brush and run it through the barrel three or four times after each group I can keep\u00a0 my shots in the black.<\/p>\n

After calling Hodgdon to make sure I wouldn’t blow myself up, I tried a few jacketed loads with 130 grain Hornady and 150 grain Winchester bullets and Trail Boss powder. They grouped okay. The jacketed bullets with Trail Boss were more accurate than the cast bullets, but not as good as the full bore stuff. It\u2019s good to know, but I\u2019ll reserve the Trail Boss for cast loads.<\/p>\n

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Hornady 130 grain jacketed soft point bullets. In my 30 06 Ruger No. 1 with IMR 4320 powder these bullets will group under an inch all day long.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Winchester 150 grain jacketed soft point bullets. These bullets shoot into a half inch from my 30 06 Winchester Model 70<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Remington 180 grain jacketed soft point bullets. These bullets shoot well in any rifle I’ve tried them in (a single-shot Browning 30 06 B78, a custom Howa 1500 30 06, a Ruger 308 GSR Scout rifle, and others). They are no longer available, which is a pity.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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200 grain Sierra jacketed hollowpoint boat tail bullets my good buddy Marty gave to me.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I shot neck sized brass with the Trail Boss cast and jacketed loads because the Trail Boss loads don\u2019t expand the case very much and it\u2019s easier to reload if I neck size only.\u00a0 I don’t have to lube the cases and it goes a lot faster.<\/p>\n

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180 grain cast .309 bullets from my good buddy Roy.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Trail Boss sweet spot with cast bullets is 20.0 grains. That\u2019s near the bottom of the charge range. I went down to 19.5 grains and there was no improvement in group size. I went above 20.0 grains and the groups opened up.\u00a0 I’m a quick study.\u00a0 20.0 grains.\u00a0 Got it.<\/p>\n

I tried neck sizing only (instead of full length resizing) with full bore loads and I found that was not the way to go. I had a lot of cases that wouldn\u2019t extract when I shot neck sized only full bore loads, and then I found when I neck sized a case it stuck it in the chamber even without firing (it was difficult to extract). Full bore loads have to be full length resized in my 300 Weatherby (with an extra quarter turn on the sizing die after it touches the shell holder for this rifle; that’s a trick a tech rep at Sierra turned me on to). The cases expand too much if you neck size only after firing full bore loads.<\/p>\n

With cast bullets, crimping the bullet is necessary for better accuracy. Not crimping opened up the groups substantially. Crimping brought them back down.\u00a0 But that’s only with cast bullets.\u00a0 For jacketed bullets, the rifle doesn’t care if you crimp them or not.\u00a0 There’s no accuracy gains to be had with crimping jacketed bullets in my rifle.<\/p>\n

Keeping the bore clean makes a difference (duh), and you need to get up close to make sure the bore is clean.\u00a0 Simply judging cleanliness by the patch coming out clean isn’t good enough.\u00a0 After my patches were coming out clean, I took a photo of the muzzle.\u00a0 I looked at it on my computer and I was shocked.\u00a0 Before examining the photo, I thought this was a clean barrel:<\/p>\n

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A macro photograph of the Weatherby’s muzzle after I thought it was relatively clean.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I realized I still had a lot of copper and lead streaking in the barrel and I went to work on it with Hoppes No. 9 and Butch’s Bore Shine.\u00a0 That reduced most of the copper, but the lead was not giving up.\u00a0 A bit of online research, and what do you know:\u00a0 Solvents (like Hoppes or Butch’s) don’t affect lead at all.\u00a0 I’ve been a shooter for 50 years and that was news to me.\u00a0 Nope, lead has to be mechanically removed.\u00a0 I soaked a pad with Kroil penetrating oil, ran it through the bore and let it soak for a while, and then I ran a bore brush down the barrel repeatedly.\u00a0 It was better, but it needed more.\u00a0 I repeated the process several times over the next two days and got the bore down to this:<\/p>\n

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The Weatherby muzzle after a much more stringent cleaning. Additional effort did not remove the minute streaks of remaining lead and copper.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The bore wouldn’t get any cleaner that what you see above.\u00a0 To the naked eye, it looks clean.\u00a0 But then, to the naked eye the first photo looked clean.\u00a0 I was probably penalizing my inspection with that macro photo.\u00a0 I know I could probably get it cleaner with something like JB Bore Paste, but I’m hesitant to use an abrasive in the bore.<\/p>\n

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It’s Trail Boss for cast and reduced jacketed loads, and IMR 7828 for the factory level loads.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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H1000 is a powder I had not previously tried in the 300 Weatherby. That’s the Mk V behind it. Weatherby has discontinued walnut stocks on their regular production rifles; they are still available on rifles through the Weatherby Custom Shop. Nothing looks better than fancy walnut, in my opinion.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I loaded various permutations of IMR 7828 and H1000 propellants, and the Sierra 200-grain jacketed hollowpoint boat tail and Remington 180-grain jacketed soft point bullets for the factory level loads.<\/p>\n

So how did the above combinations perform at 100 yards?\u00a0 Take a look:<\/p>\n

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The rifle is unquestionably capable of better results than you see above, but not with me.\u00a0 I’m usually not recoil shy, but this 300 Weatherby at factory ammo levels is a bit beyond what I’m willing to live with on a regular basis.\u00a0 A better rifleman could probably keep most of the above loads below an inch.\u00a0 But an inch and half is good enough for me, and several of the factory-level loads above did that.\u00a0 I can hunt with this rifle, and that’s what I’m going to do.<\/p>\n

So what’s next?\u00a0 I found a couple of boxes of 180 grain Hornady jacketed soft point bullets, and I have a few Nosler 180 grain bullets as well.\u00a0 I’m going to try a few loads with them.\u00a0 I haven’t tried too many loads with lighter bullets, mostly because earlier results were disappointing.\u00a0 But I haven’t given up on the lighter bullets.\u00a0 I’m going to revisit a few loads with them.\u00a0 And I have a couple of powders I want to try as well.\u00a0 Bottles of powder don’t last long with a 300 Weatherby, though, when you look at kind of powder charges these cases demand.\u00a0 When you’re dispensing 80 grains of propellant per round, 100 rounds of 300 Weatherby consumes an entire bottle of powder.\u00a0 And powders (like everything else) are somewhat difficult to find these days.<\/p>\n

Truth be told, the 300 Weatherby is specialty item, and it’s a punishing beast.\u00a0 It’s surprising how much of an increase in recoil there is in going from a 30 06, a 300 H&H, or a 7mm Magnum (in either Remington or Weatherby flavors) to a 300 Weatherby.\u00a0 \u00a0But shooting the 300 Weatherby is fun in its own way.\u00a0 I sure enjoy mine.<\/p>\n

If you shoot a 300 Weatherby, we’d like to hear your thoughts on the cartridge and the rifle.\u00a0 Please leave a comment here on the ExNotes blog.<\/p>\n

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More Tales of the Gun<\/a>…revolvers, rifles, pistols, pellet guns, reloading, and more.\u00a0 \u00a0It’s all right here<\/a>!<\/p>\n

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More Weatherby<\/a>?\u00a0 You bet!<\/p>\n

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I\u2019ve been on a tear the last few weeks, playing with the Mk V 300 Weatherby and developing loads for it.\u00a0 \u00a0I developed loads with cast bullets and with jacketed bullets, and at reduced-load levels and at factory ammo levels. The Internet weenies advise going hotter with this cartridge to get better accuracy, but I … Continue reading “300 Weatherby Recipes: An Update”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15616,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[675,2316,762,2472,767,2471,2470,2473,765],"class_list":["post-15410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guns","tag-300-weatherby","tag-300-weatherby-cast-bullets","tag-300-weatherby-magnum","tag-300-weatherby-pet-loads","tag-fancy-walnut","tag-favorite-300-weatherby-loads","tag-mk-v-weatherby","tag-reduced-300-weatherby-magnum-loads","tag-weatherby-mark-v"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/20211223_0008-900.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15410"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18735,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15410\/revisions\/18735"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}