30-30 powder

[alaskamace]

What is your favorite powder for loading the old 30-30?

What is your favorite bullet weight for hunting?

[alaskamace]

Has anyone used the 170 gr. from Oregon Trail?

[BrownBear]

What is your favorite powder for loading the old 30-30?

What is your favorite bullet weight for hunting?

My long time favorite has been 3031. If I was going to explore another powder, I'd look first at RL-7. Favorite bullet weight is 170 grains, both jacketed and cast (#2 alloy with gas check).

[nrc]

3031

First choice 3031, 2nd H335, Third W748.

I have not tried, but heard good results from RL7.

[walk-in]

I use 4064 and 170 gr. Hornady.

[zooly]

I like this combo, it's from an old "Fouling Shot". Try the Lyman 311284 gas checked air cooled WW size 309. NRA alox/bee's wax + 32-36 gr. WW 760. I shoot it in my H&R Handy, nice!

zooly

[Smitty of the North]

I've used IMR 3031, and H4895, and now W748.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I've used the Oregon Trail 170 grain bullets. It appears to be the Lyman 311041 mould design. They were pretty hard, and would shatter when impacting something tuff, like slick magazines stuffed in a box. I felt they wouldn't be suitable for hunting, but they shot OK.

I gott'em from Cabelas, and they came without gas checks, so I hadda put some on, and size them.

I got some better ones, (Not so hard, but of the same design) from Bear Tooth Bullets. When you order from there, you will hafta wait for months because they are moulded by hand, and they're very busy.

Smitty of the North

[ADfields]

H4895 with IMR4895 close 2nd. Reloader 17 would be a fun one to try, its a bit slower but could do well in the smallish 30-30 case.

Andy

[whitlock]

3031 and W748. I shoot it out of a contender so i am shootign 168 and 150 gr spitser bullets.

[BrownBear]

What is your favorite powder for loading the old 30-30?

What is your favorite bullet weight for hunting?

This is unsolicited and straying from the original question, but there appear to be enough 30-30 fans here to be worth passing on:

Starting with the 30-30 as the "parent" case, the whole family of cartridges is fun to reload and shoot. I'm well acquainted with the 32 Special and the 25-35. There's also the 219 Zipper and 219 Donaldson Wasp, both of which I have owned in single shots. If you like the 30-30, you owe it to yourself to jump on one of the others first chance you get. Wahoo!

I had been watching a long time for an original 94 25-35 "shooter" with a good bore at a reasonable price. No such animal. Then a couple of years ago Winchester turned loose a new run of 25-35's, and I was all over it. That has turned out to be about the most fun gun I own. Pass a 30-30 case through a 25-35 sizing die, and you're in business. But buy or cast lots of bullets. A whole lot of them. Because you'll be shooting that little 25 more than your probably shoot a 22 right now. Like I said..... Wahoo!

[ADfields]

This is unsolicited and straying from the original question, but there appear to be enough 30-30 fans here to be worth passing on:

Starting with the 30-30 as the "parent" case, the whole family of cartridges is fun to reload and shoot. I'm well acquainted with the 32 Special and the 25-35. There's also the 219 Zipper and 219 Donaldson Wasp, both of which I have owned in single shots. If you like the 30-30, you owe it to yourself to jump on one of the others first chance you get. Wahoo!

I had been watching a long time for an original 94 25-35 "shooter" with a good bore at a reasonable price. No such animal. Then a couple of years ago Winchester turned loose a new run of 25-35's, and I was all over it. That has turned out to be about the most fun gun I own. Pass a 30-30 case through a 25-35 sizing die, and you're in business. But buy or cast lots of bullets. A whole lot of them. Because you'll be shooting that little 25 more than your probably shoot a 22 right now. Like I said..... Wahoo!

What kind of range and accuracy do you get from a Winchester in 25-35?
I'm not so much a 30-30 fan as I am a lever action fan, not that I don't love the good ole 30-30!

Andy

[BrownBear]

What kind of range and accuracy do you get from a Winchester in 25-35?
I'm not so much a 30-30 fan as I am a lever action fan, not that I don't love the good ole 30-30!

Andy

My wife and I do offhand shooting almost exclusively on our outings. I've got a receiver sight on it, and I can blow up 16 oz water bottles all day long at 50 yards and hit them most of the time or come close enough to worry them at 100 yards. I haven't shot it on paper at 100 yards, but at 50 it's doing 1"-2" with my elbows rested on the hood of my truck and no other rest. The book sezz my load of 3031 is pushing a 117 grain jacketed RN or cast to between 2100 and 2200 fps, but I've never chrono'ed it. When you get down near 20 grains of powder per shot, there's just a whole lot of shots in a can of powder!

It's a real mild gun to shoot too- even milder than my (my wife's?) Savage 99 in 250, also with a receiver sight. Shooting side by side, they seem to be comparably accurate, though she's shooting a load under 87 or 90 grain bullets at about 2800fps that usually runs around 1.5" at 100 when you put a scope on it. I've whapped exactly two deer with it, both neck shots inside 50 yards, so it didn't prove anything. I'd probably take lung shots out to 100 with it.

Biggest problem with the 25-35, or the 250 Savage for that matter, is keeping them fed. It's a rare day that we go out and don't shoot more than 100 rounds apiece through the two rifles. I keep 200 rounds of each loaded on the "theory" that it will be two shooting sessions before I have to reload, but it seldom works out that way. Seems like once you start shooting, you just can't stop till all the ammo is gone.

[ADfields]

My wife and I do offhand shooting almost exclusively on our outings. I've got a receiver sight on it, and I can blow up 16 oz water bottles all day long at 50 yards and hit them most of the time or come close enough to worry them at 100 yards. I haven't shot it on paper at 100 yards, but at 50 it's doing 1"-2" with my elbows rested on the hood of my truck and no other rest. The book sezz my load of 3031 is pushing a 117 grain jacketed RN or cast to between 2100 and 2200 fps, but I've never chrono'ed it. When you get down near 20 grains of powder per shot, there's just a whole lot of shots in a can of powder!

It's a real mild gun to shoot too- even milder than my (my wife's?) Savage 99 in 250, also with a receiver sight. Shooting side by side, they seem to be comparably accurate, though she's shooting a load under 87 or 90 grain bullets at about 2800fps that usually runs around 1.5" at 100 when you put a scope on it. I've whapped exactly two deer with it, both neck shots inside 50 yards, so it didn't prove anything. I'd probably take lung shots out to 100 with it.

Biggest problem with the 25-35, or the 250 Savage for that matter, is keeping them fed. It's a rare day that we go out and don't shoot more than 100 rounds apiece through the two rifles. I keep 200 rounds of each loaded on the "theory" that it will be two shooting sessions before I have to reload, but it seldom works out that way. Seems like once you start shooting, you just can't stop till all the ammo is gone.

It never matters how much ammo I take out shooting I always come home with just one load for each gun. If I take a 357 Blackhawk and 500 rounds or 25 rounds I come back with 5 in the gun and a bunch of brass to load. Sometimes I got to fight with myself to keep from shooting the last 5, but my rule is to always keep a just-in-case load for every gun. The wife says I'm a shooting addict.


I was thinking the 25-35 would be a good predator calling round out to 150 or 200 yards. I’m fairly sure the round would be, but I was wondering if the Winchester would do the round justice at that range. Can’t judge it very well with iron sights but it sounds like it shoots about like the good old model 94 30-30's from what you say.

Andy

[BrownBear]

I was thinking the 25-35 would be a good predator calling round out to 150 or 200 yards. I’m fairly sure the round would be, but I was wondering if the Winchester would do the round justice at that range. Can’t judge it very well with iron sights but it sounds like it shoots about like the good old model 94 30-30's from what you say.

If you could hit them that far with open sights, it would certainly do the job power-wise. The challenge might come in the trajectory department with that RN bullet at only 2100-2200 or so. There aren't any 100 grain RNs around that I know of, though the Remington 86 grain FP I use in my 25-20's might be pretty impressive. Come to think of it, the Speer 75 grain FP I also use for the 25-20 might be REAL impressive at 25-35 velocitieis, though probably too impressive on hides at closer ranges. I'll have to explore both bullets a little more in my rifle, just because I have over a thousand of each on the shelf.

You could always single load spitzers in a 94, but that kind of defeats the purpose in my book. Actually if you got the LOA right so they'd feed from the magazine you could keep one spitzer in the mag and one in the chamber, but I'm a little reluctant to start stacking spitzers end to end even at 25-35 recoil levels.

Come to think of it, a bud of mine has a Sharpes in 25-35. I'll have to ask him if he's played with spitzers and longer ranges.

Sorry Alaskamace, for the deflection from your original question about powders for the 30-30, but ADfields has really got my mind cooking here.

[ADfields]

Yes, sorry for the hijack! Like I said before I love IMR-4895 and/or H4895 for 30-30 myself.

BrownBear let us know what you learn in your 25-35 experiments.

Andy