I've got a couple of young shooters coming up in the family and I'm looking for suggestions on a good reduced load for deer sized game for my .270 and .280. I've never tinkered with reduced loads before so I thought maybe you guys could give me a good starting point. Thanks.

I too have a young up and coming shooter who wants to use a .284 that his uncle gave him, trouble is that Ruger M77 has quite a kick to it with factory loads (150 grain power points) so I went to the Hodgdons website and looked at their "Youth reduced loads", please check their site but what it basically boils down too is to use one of their suggested loads for your intended caliber using H4895 and start at %60 of that published load. Please check out their website.
I had never loaded any reduced loads either but these things work great, the kid is shooting the gun fantastic and has a late season Cow elk tag (ends Jan 31st) so we are going out on thursday and friday to give it a shot.
Good luck and have fun with the kids!

I never really had much luck with h4895 reduced loads. May I suggest you do a search for seafire's Bluedot loads. I have found them to be very accurate, and a lot of fun to shoot. .308loads that have less felt recoil than a .243, and an honest 200yd range.

Good luck on your search for reduced loads!

Thurdy Pointer....

I sure miss hearing that song every year before Deer Season back in Minnesota and in Wisconsin...

Anyway, since my Name was mentioned above....
Drop me a PM, or email...and let me know what bullet weights you prefer, and what are your bullets of preference.. ( I ask about bullet preference as some popular bullets such as a Partition won't open well below 2000 fps....)

Reduced loads can be as effective, and sometimes more effective than full power loads.... depending upon the game you are hunting.. but don't let some of the magnum guys fool you into believing you need high velocity for something to work well....

cheers
seafire

Seafire is the guy you need to talk to...

Elsewise, check out the Speer manual. SR4759 is a popular choice, as is IMR 4198....

http://www.hodgdon.com/data/youth/index.php This might help on the .270 youth loads Hodgdon