I've never reloaded rifle ammo before and need advice on how many grains of powder to use. I'm reloading 7mm Mag. using Sierra Game King 175 grain Spitzer Boat Tails. I'm looking for a bit hotter load as I want the flattest trajectory I can get to at least 300 yrds. I used factory 165 grain Nosler Partions last season and was not impressed with them at all. After using three shots to kill a moose last season ( the first 2 rounds were well placed, the third because it was suffering )we found that the Nosler Partions just weren't doing the damage needed.Any help here would be very much appreciated.

May I suggest you take about three steps backward, before you start just stuffing powder in cases? Remember, you will be making little pipe-bombs that will go off 6 inches from your eye........ Start by reading the instruction part of a good reloading manual, such as Lyman, Speer, Hornady. Then, read it again, and read another one.

As far as your quandary, I'll begin by asking you to make sure that it was indeed a Nosler Partition that you shot. Nosler doesn't make a 165 grain 7mm bullet. Nosler Partitions are not my personal favorite, but they are unquestionably a premium bullet that are consistently among the very top performers in the field. Three failures in a row would be a once in a billion occurrance. Going to a 175 gr. Sierra would almost certainly be a WORSE choice. FWIW, Dutch.

Dutch is right, you need to do a bit of reading on reloading, get someone to walk you through to start. I have used the 160grNP in my 7mag w/ good success on deer to elk size game. I think if I only had the 7mag to hunt moose w/ I would step up to the 175grNP. What kind of perf. did you have w/ the Federal loads?

As far as reloading, unless you have a cronograph, you will have no idea what your factory or handloads are doing. You can reasonably expect 3000fps w/ the 160grNP & 2900fps from the 175gr. If you have a 26" bbl. you may push 3100fps & 3000fps respectively. Try IMR7828, RL22 or H1000 from loads in a good manual, I like Noslers manual. Good luck!