Lyman 314299

Snakeoil

Well-Known Member
The reason I asked is because I have had problems in the past with accuracy going south when the bullets went trans sonic.
In my case, long before 500 yards.
I went down that road. It's a long, dark, road. Too many at the club were shooting with MVs in the same range and doing well using similar rifles. I stopped looking for excuses and started doing a better job at reading conditions.

Some bullets seem to fall apart beyond 300. The general finding is longer bullets of the same basic shape do better. It could be transonics. Upping MV made groups get huge. Maybe getting them up to 2000 fps or higher might fix both. But it makes for more recoil and target damage in my case.

I started down this path with a .38-55. Even tried breech seating. Moved to .32-40 and put the .38 in the rack. I have the bigger bullets. Should probably revisit this winter.
 

waco

Springfield, Oregon
I was having these issues with the 299 in my .308.
I'm now looking at loading them in my 03 Springfield. Probably not going to try for 500 with the open sights but hitting steel out to 2-300 would be nice. I'll just have to play around and see how it goes.
 

fiver

Well-Known Member
should do 300 easy.
all i shoot my 17 at is 300 yds. with the 041 and 19grs. of 2400.
it just happened to like the load and the sights just happened to be set for that distance [shrug] i've never tried anything else in it.
just sit there and bong the dinger down there.
 

CWLONGSHOT

Well-Known Member
What about that fancy NOE mold, 310-165 FP XRP or XRM bullet? I'll have to check the mold number. I don't remember it offhand but it was a special designed bullet by a bunch of different guys. Maybe Ian knows? He might've even been involved with its design if I'm remembering correctly. Being able to shoot a cast bullet at Long range would be a pretty fun experiment for me especially because about 300 yards as far as I've ever been able to shoot at all. I'm hoping to stretch that to maybe as far as 1000 next summer.
 

MW65

Wetside, Oregon
The 299 has been a fav for me in both the 308 & -06... in the 308, even PB loads in the 788 were doing really well out to 200yd steel once holdovers were figured out. Need to play a bit more with -06 out for 200yd mil matches, but with the NOE 314299, has plenty of size-ability for even the WW1 toys.
 

Snakeoil

Well-Known Member
Probably not going to try for 500 with the open sights
It's very doable. But I realize that aging has an effect on our eyes and holding a focus can be a challenge. If you have a Merit adjustable eyepiece or a Hadley type eyecup, that can help a great deal in getting the target and sights into focus. Needless to say, the target has to be big enough to be able to see it. But BPCR silhouettes were pretty much an iron sight game until they started allowing Malcolm type scopes to help those with aging eyes. We have a couple guys in their 80's still shooting iron sights out to 500. And at Forbes, we still have guys with gray hair shooting modern iron sights out to 1000 yds. The only difference is your sight picture. My late friend John, who was Sendero here, said, "With sights, I shoot at a target. With a scope, I shoot at a spot on the target.".

If you do it enough, you'd be surprised at how well you can do. It's like anything else, you need to get a feel for it. And the more you shoot out to 500 yds, the easier shooting at 200 is going to seem. It's like target sizes. When I was shooting action pistol, I would practice with very small steel plates. 4 inch plates were my normal practice size. Then I'd go to a match and there would be 8 inch plates, and that gave me a psychological boost. It was like shooting at the side of a barn. ;)