I posted this in Reloading, hope its allrigtht to post here as well, to try and get a little quicker answer maybe.

I was wondering what would be the lowest charge I could go with Reloader 15, and a 400gr. Hornady bullet? I want to get out and shoot my new rifle, but my shoulder is still recovering from an injury this Summer. These wouldnt be hunting loads, just to get out and burn some powder.
I dont want to do nothing like putting some sort of material in between bullet and powder. Just want the safest lowest charge I can shoot, and have consistant burning, with the above components.

Thanx.

I do not have a Hornady manual handy so I'm unsure if they even recommend R15 for that bullet. Going by memory alone, I think most minimum recommended loads for a 400gr bullet runs approximately 2250fps +/-. Depending on the powder, the low end loads are in the neighborhood of the low to mid 70gr range. Many advise against going below these minimum charges as lower volumes of certain powders in a large case may cause problems.

At one time Barnes made a 325gr bullet that worked well w/ R15 in the 80-88gr range. IIRC, this bullet w/ 83gr R15 was fairly standard. This made for a serviceable load that had reduced recoil over the 400gr bullet. Other options would be a 350gr bullet w/ R15 in the 76 - 88gr range. Many a deer and elk have fallen to the Speer 350 mag-tip and R15.

My personal favorite 416Rem loads are 350gr or 370gr bullets over 80-81gr R15.

Good Luck,
GVA

try the 350 grain speer magtip over 80 grains of blc2 - nice benchrest load to stay in shape.

Hornady says the safe minimum for the 416 Remington Magnum and the 400gr Hornady bullet is: 70.4gr Rel 15 for 2150 fps.

The best smokeless powder that I know of that does not need a filler for reduced loads is Accurate Arms 5744.

Hog Killer

A very comfortable load in the .416 Rigby was 50-52 grains XMP5744 and RCBS 350-grain gas-checked cast bullet at about 2,000. You should be able to find a very similar load for the Remington, and if you do not cast, you can find this bullet are cast, checked and lubed from commercial sources. This was a one-incher at 100 yards in a Ruger No. 1.

My favorite reduced load is a speer 350 gr mag tip and 76 grs of reloader 15.Its 2400 fps and kick alot less than full loads.Its usually pretty accurate.I have shot it over a 100 times in a day.

It all depends on how low you want to get.

We load reduced loads for all our rifles, using pistol powders rather than rifle powders.

One of the best for this purpose is UNIQUE, which in most cases does not need a filler.

In the 460 Weatherby and 577 T.Rex we use either pieces of tissue paper or, better still, some pillow filler thatr looks like loose cotton.