I will hunt moose this week with my ruger :06 Can someone give me a good load for the 200 grain speer bullet? I know the 180 is a good bullet but i have a box of 200's now.

I have shot the 200 gr. Speer Hot Cor spitzer in my 30-06 (22" barreled M70).

58 grains of Winchester WXR gave me 2583 fps avg. speeds, and slightly over 1" avg. groups. I used a Federal Gold Medal case and CCI BR-2 primer. OAL was 3.23".

Other powders similar to WXR that would work would be RL22 and H4831sc.

**p.s., reduce this load 5% and work up slow**

H-4831 From 48.9 grains to 60.0 grains
Winchester WLR Primer

RL-22 54.0 to 58.0 grains
H4831 54.0 to 58.0 grains
Vith165 55.0 to 59.0 Grains
Approach top loads with Caution.

Any should work well enough for angle of Moose.

LETS start this for the Negative Critic crowd:
" WORK THIS UP AT 10 % BELOW THIS RECOMMENDATION"

From Steve Riccardelli's sight, using the 200 grainers, I worked up loads using his recommendation of 60 grains of H 4831 SC.

I also walked this up to 61.5 grains which pretty much fills the case, leaving some room to seat a compressed load.

This load has been used for about 3 years now, by me and relatives who wanted to load their '06s to the top for elk shooting.

In a Weatherby and Model 70, but with 24 inch barrels, these load average chronographing 2825 to 2850 fps.

In a 22 inch barreled Browing A Bolt, they chronographed breaking 2800 each time, but 2825 was the max and only reached a few times. All loads tho, broke 2800 fps.

In a 1917 Enfield with a 26 inch barrel, this load has pretty much chronograped at 2875 plus.
It has not broken 2900, but is pretty much over 2875.

Accuracy in each one of these rifles have been excellent at 100 and 200 yrds.

All of these loads have only been chronographed and tested with a SPEER 200 grain bullet, nothing else.

Large rifle primers were used, Fed 210 and CCI Large Rifle.

[ 09-01-2003, 10:19: Message edited by: seafire ]

Greg, Don't you think you could spend a few extra bucks and get something better than those plain old Speers. I would reccommend that you go for the Barnes X 180s. Or better yet leave the Ruger at home and take a 375H&H if you have one.
Ken

Unless one has other rifles that are ready to go I would not fool around with load development at this time. The 30-06 will do just fine with 180's.

Instead I would check on other stuff like saws, knives and maybe some way of getting the beast out of the woods.

However I like that 200 gr Speer a lot but have only loaded it in my 06 Improved. Velocities with RL 19 are in the 2600 range out of a 22" barrel and I am staying with that load. I don't think the cartridge is capable of much more velocity with normal loading techniques.

Le270:

The chronograph was a plain old chrony. People some times tell me it is reading too high. Sent it back to chrony and they indicated it was just fine. Have compared it to other Chronys at the range and it is in specs, giving pretty much the same readings as others.

This load has also been chronographed over and Oehler and gave the same readings.
Bullets are seated out to just shy of the lands and each rifle is long throated. I have most of my rifles throated out to the length of the magazine.

Only other thing I can tell you is try it if you have a 30/06 and tell us your readings. As Will Rogers said " If you did it, then it ain't braggin". People on here question a lot of stuff, without any proof of there own to back it up. However, I have read a lot of your other posts, and you are a man that I trust his judgement and strike me as a straight shooter ( no pun intended).

With Nosler getting something like 2688 out of their manuals with a 200 grain partition and RL 22 and 2872 with a 180 grainer with RL 22, do you really think that is that far off base??? I actually got better velocity and accuracy with H 4831 SC than RL 22 when I was working this up. Steve Riccardelli's reloading pages also list 60 grains of H 4831 as the fastest powder with a 200 grain bullet, faster than he rated 60 grains of RL 22.
Normally H 4831 is not one of my top powder of choices.
However I think the chrony is reading just fine.
It has also read lower readings than claimed in reload manuals also.

[ 09-02-2003, 10:06: Message edited by: seafire ]

All the replys might be good but be very careful if you look into the Speer #13 and use H4350. I used that data and didn't reduce it enough from the max. It blew the primer and I had to replace the extracter ball and spring. BM

I'd also recommend RL 22 and H4831.
The high 50's can get you close, if not to, 2600 fps with a 24" bbl. My rifle wouldn't seat them out farther than 3.24" or so, so I couldn't squeeze more than 58.5 gr or so into it.

Ken. There ain't a damn thing wrong with the 200 gr. Speers. I load them to 2950 FPS in my .300 Win.mag. and they work just fine on elk, which are considered by some to be a tougher critter than moose.
For the 30-06, I load 56.5 gr. of IMR-4831 for 2610 FPS from a Remington M700 BDL.
FWIW, I don't have much use for those overpriced premium bullets. The one time I used them, I almost lost the biggest deer I ever had the privilige of taking. I won't be using them again, anytime soon.
Paul B.

LE 270
no fear.... you will not get 2800 fps with a 200 gn proj in the 06 the closest you will get is around 2700 and that is a pretty stiff load ...i have one load that im playing around with now that im getting 2828 fps but i think my pressures were in the 7o,ooo psi range and that was useing a slow powder and my 06 has a 26 inch tube

seafire ...i would be really intrested to see the velocities of your loads when fired through an O 35P ....with all due respect i think you might get a suprise

daniel

Paul B., I would tend to agree with you about the premium bullets. I have used a lot of sierras, hornadys and speers. I was just giving Greg a hard time since I know what his reloading set up is like. I bet these Speers are left over from his days with his 300 Win Mag. He sold that Ruger about 5 years ago. He reports that he did get a small bull with the 30-06. He didn't tell me which load he used but I would suspect RL-22 since we had talked about it last time we shot the 06 and he has some. By the way he is going to take his 375 out next week when he is off work because there are big brown bears where he is going.

M 98:
Dan, this load has been chronographed thru an Oehler Chronograph within the past week surprisingly. Readings were right on with the cheap old Chrony F 1.

Maybe I am just having a little devine intervention on my behalf. The bullet is seated just short of the lands.

Maybe we don't have all that increased viscosity air called smoke to slow it down here in my part of Oregon. That velocity held tough in both a Winchester Model 70 and a Weatherby Vanguard ( Howa) '06.

Only thing I can say to some of those that question my loads, are the chambers on my rifles are bored out to allow the bullet to be seated to the full length of the magazine. Maybe that is why I manage to get velocities a little higher than people are saying possible.

Bottom line is tho, whether anyone gets 2700, 2750 or 2800 fps, with a 200 grain Speer, I really don't think it is going to matter much in real terms. No dramatically flatter trajectory, or more terminal power. None of us should really get hung up or a 100 fps, one way or another. On the other hand, I just report what I see on the readings of my chronograph or what I see in the field.

If you really think about it, making claims that are unfounded, even a little brings out the millions of resident critics on this board who just wait to pounce on something that is not in one of the books on their shelf. So it really behoves anyone with any common sense to not do anything to bait these people.

If you can make a counter opinion based on your experience then we all can share that. No one is more right than another guy, because you can shoot your loads in my rifle, nor mine in yours since we are usually far apart.

A friend with an Oehler and I do sometimes run into each other at the range, and we commonly test some of our loads over each other's chrony to compare readings, just to make sure our own chrony's are not out of wack. Both of us find loads reading higher or lower than what manuals say they should and frequently dramatically different up or down. My conclusion it is all at more accurate guess at best. But it still provides useful information.

LE270:

when you try that load out, I know you know what you are doing. However for the benefit of the board lounge lizard critics, heading them off at the pass, work your load up from 10 % below that amount.