I had a puzzling occurrence this last week. I was hunting deer with my 375 H&H (use enough gun) using a load that has shot well in the past in this and several other guns. The load is 72 gr. of Varget behind a Barnes XLC 235gr bullet. This is not a max load according to the book. I had several rounds loaded up and had not tried them in the chamber prior to the hunt. Some of the rounds would only chamber with firm pressure on the bolt. The rifle is a Winchester mod 70 classic. This particular round had a firm resistance to bolt closing. On dispatching a deer there was significant sharp recoil, difficult bolt lift, and a bright shiny spot on the base of the brass. Too much pressure!!! I have scratched my head over what happened. One of my reloading friends suggested my brass was too long and the brass bit firmly into the bullet causing the increased pressure. This made sense but my brass was .01 short of regulation length, 2.840 rather than 2.850. I think it has something to do with my brass. The OAL is well short of the chamber length since my magazine is much shorter than my chamber. I have two resizing dies(neck by Redding and FL by RCBS) and I honestly do not remember which I used for this batch.This is the third loading of this brass. Any ideas?.... I have thought it over with several of my friends and think a reasonable way to approach it is to disassemble several of the rounds that are difficult to chamber, neck resize some and full resize some and see if they will chamber. What do you think? Again any ideas? Thanks "D"

OK, I finally got to the reloading bench to start to unravel this puzzle. Here is what I did. First off the bullets dropped readily into the fired cases with no trouble. To me this means the neck thickness issue is not the problem. I found several loaded cases and several fired cases that had difficult bolt close. I started with 8 cases that had difficult bolt close. I neck resized all 8. One fed clean and the rest still refused to feed smoothly. Next I FL resized the remaining 7 cases 2 more then fed smooth. Still 5 refused to feed well. A couple were about .005 long. I shortened them to WELL under specs as in .03 short of regulation. Still the bolt refused to close smoothly. The belt size seems to have no rhyme or reason as to the ones that feed and not. All seem to be about .530527. Any more ideas? Do I just pitch out the brass and buy new? I think this is only the 3rd loading and for the fired brass this is only the second firing. Seems like very short brass life. Thanks "D"

D,
Check the length of the belt to the base... I think you'll find this long.

OR

Smoke (magic marker) the ENTIRE case, and feed them. The scuffing on the side it to be ignored, but see if the shoulder takes a BIG hit and if the belt (and right in front of the belt) show heavy rubbing....

jeffe

Rough expander pulling shoulder long? You can tell this is a W A G.