Alliant BE-86

[Jeff H]

....
maybe 6-10 a day is enough, but you have to still go do those 6-10.

Definitely can't GET good and then sit back and STAY good.

I found out first-hand that you gen get really bad a lot quicker than you can get pretty good.

I got pulled away from shooting regularly some years ago. Now, some years ago, I was a pretty decent shot, but didn't realize it at that time. It wasn't until I'd let my skills deteriorate to pretty bad to see it by comparison. Some years ago, I shot with other people on occasion and could not for the life of me understand how they shot so poorly rather than recognize how I shot so well. NOW I understand. QUANTITY is a factor, but the only factor and definitely does not make up for slacking on the other factors.

You know, I don't MIND shooting a lot. Spending the better part of a day with my dad or my brother on rare occasions, shooting maybe 200 or 300 rounds over the course of many hours has happened, but it was never the key to getting better, in fact, the sign-post we passed that told us it was time to quit was always one of us realizing we were starting to suck a little. "Nah, now I'm just wasting ammo - I'm done for the day..."

I enjoy the little "6-10 a day" days a LOT, especially if I can get them in somewhat regularly. Sometimes they are only five rounds and a week or so ago only three, but I made them count and feel like I'm starting to get my sh...tuff together again - a little.

 

[300BLK]

I was looking for a substitute for Unique and Universal in bottleneck rifle cartridges. I've tried it in the 223, and while its a fine flake that meters well, it sure didn't give me the groups I was looking for. AA#7 looked good in the AR manually operated, but was awful in the boltgun. Its not that I'm in dire need, just looking for alternatives and reserving what I have on hand.

 

[TXTad]

I jumped in and bought an 8# jug of BE-86. Where it sits on the burn rate chart means it should have a lot of utility. While it is not brand new, it hasn't been out there long enough to have the volume of data for it as some of the more established powders. Another one that I like that has been available at a good price lately is WC-244. I bought several pounds of it because it was very aggressively priced last Christmas. With free hazmat on top of that. I've started using it for my plinking loads, saving my Unique for things like my Skeeter loads. At this point, with Alliant prices being so high relative to the others, I'm looking for anything else to use when I'm not specifically needing (wanting) to load some, uh, historical loads.

The thing that convinced me to jump in so deeply to BE-86 is just how good some of the published loads seem to be.