I am looking for a 357 MAG load for Cowboy Shooting that uses a 158 grain Lead bullet, Magnum Small Pistol Primers (I am out of standard primers) and Hodgdon HS6 Powder. I found a good recipe on the Hodgdon website but it does not state weather to use MAG or Standard small pistol primers. Normally I would assume MAG primers, but many of the loads I have found for 357 tell you to use standard small pistol primers rather than Magnum. I sent an email to Hodgdon too, but thought I'd try this forum as well. Thanks.

With magnum primers, I'd drop the max loads by 0.5 grain in handgun cartridges.

The only powders that you must use a mag primer w/ in the 357mag is H110/W296 & AA#9. Every other powder will load w/ std. sp. If your load is a mild one, swapping in a mag primer will ahve little affect. If you are pushing max, dropping back 3%-5% & working back up is recommended.

El Deguello and fredj, thanks for the advice. The load I was looking at recommended 6.0 gr, so based on your comments I think I'll drop to 5.5 and shoot a few test rounds. Are you finding standard small pistol primers anywhere? I got some at the Chantilly gun show a couple of weeks ago, but the vendor was limiting sales to 1000 per person. Thanks again.

Primers are thin everywhere. Watch Widenr's, they get Wolf in pretty regular. I ordered 5K from Graf's the end of March, got them the middle of June. That is how I would go about getting primers, put an order in for at least 5K w/ Graf's & wait.

Thanks, I'll give Graf's a try.