7mm hunting rifle

[yukonal]

I don't know what he's got going on there, but in my 7 Rem Mag Tikka, I'm loading 160 AccuBombs to the lands, and I still have room in the mag. 3032 fps.

Kill a mulie?

 

[effendude]

Not to hijack the post with this hunting talk, but yes. a 190" 9 year old 4x4 buck the first night. 30" inside spread. Saw a bigger buck the last day. Well over 200" B&C.
I'll post pics soon.
Scott

 

[wvuredneck09]

stop teasing with the huge bucks, and I get the point about the rem mag. Just dont know that I want another magnum although I hear 195 grain hybrids are in the works and it might take a big magnum for those HUGE pills, wonder if the BC will be worth it?

 

[wvuredneck09]

Okay if i went with a standard 7-08 would it be easier to start with lapua 260 brass or 308 and how would you all go about forming? Step by step for a guy that has never done any necking up/down/changing shoulder angles etc. are the 284 shooters out their simply expanding the case mouths or lapua 6.5-284?

 

[Nowind0]

I step up the 6.5x284 Lapua brass in two steps to 7mm. Use a good case lube on the inside of the necks, and don't ape the press handle. Some have had problems with donuts, but I never have. However, I shoot the 180's seated long.

 

[XTR]

Okay if i went with a standard 7-08 would it be easier to start with lapua 260 brass or 308 and how would you all go about forming? Step by step for a guy that has never done any necking up/down/changing shoulder angles etc. are the 284 shooters out their simply expanding the case mouths or lapua 6.5-284?

Before I would go through the trouble of necking Lapua Brass I'd shoot Winchester. I've been going through this evaluation for this years F class season. I'm still working up loads in a new barrel and maybe I'll change my mind after I shoot some more, but I doubt it.

Before everyone freaks out there are a number of reasons I'd not neck up/down for a 7-08.

The time it takes to sort and prep the W-W is not going to be significantly different to the time you spend resizing Lapua, in fact I'm guessing that it may actually be less because you're going to end up having to turn and/or ream necks. (Do some research on it, one poster here says he has no problems, there are a host of others that tell a different story.) Weigh the W-W and toss out the really light or heavy's, clean up the flash hole and the primer pocket, and then measure and trim after they are fired the first time. (Which I do with Lapua too)

I've loaded and shot Lapua, yes, it's beautiful out of the box, but at more than 2x the price it better be. -->W-W has more case case capacity.<-- I shoot F-TR, and there are a number of F class shooters (self included) that use W-W because it allows you to load one to two full grains more powder before you start crunching. If you are trying to push into or to the top of the next node it's worth it.

Conventional wisdom says you can load Lapua 8 to 12 times, Darrell shoots on the US/F-TR team and he says his W-W 308 stuff starts to get loose primers after 8 reloads. That's loaded smokin hot. Back to the how many rounds do you plan to shoot a year? Buy 200 W-W, even if you cull them hard you'll keep 175 or more, if you shoot 200 rounds a year (a lot for a hunting rifle) that will last you 9 years.

With my Kreiger barreled F-TR rifle doing load workups at 200 yards with W-W brass I've got lots of groups under .5 moa and several groups under .25 moa. (I'm currently shooting 3x fired brass) In the 308 that I hunt with I reload in brass from Lake City M80 ball, (free is as cheap as it gets) and can shoot under .75moa at 200 yards 165SGKs and that is plenty good for deer. LC cases are very thick and hold at least two grains less powder than a W-W case, but I'm happy in a lower node with this rifle.


SO, all that said, if this is for a hunting rifle how many rounds do you think it will see a year? Just how accurate do you need to be? Do you need to spend that much time and $$ and other than being able to say "I'm using Lapua brass" what does it buy for you?

 

[wvuredneck09]

interesting way to look at it and I agree but if I were to go with the 7-08AI or 280AI I'd have to fire-form and go through all of that as well with Winchester brass. I have had great luck out of W-W before though, and what kind of question is, How well do you need to shoot? Everyone should chase a quarter minute at the very least lol. Really MOA gun at 600 is plenty, for just about any big game vital.

 

[redneckclimbing]

wvuredneck-

I saw your post about the 7mm Hunting Rifle. I have an idea, if you're interested, that may help us both out. I have another thread started on here called 7mm SAUM Wildcat. Check it out, anyways my thoughts were if I bought the reamer and dies, I would let you use them in your rifle build if you kept me up to date on your load results. Worst case scenario if you didn't like the cartridge you could always come in behind it with either a SAUM or WSM reamer and not loose any barrel length.
My criteria with this wildcat were to shoot the 180 Berger at least 2850 (enough for elk out 600 no problem), while using the same amount of powder as a .284 Shehane (to lessen recoil, and have better barrel life than the SAUM or WSM), as well as fit in a short action with the 180 Berger "loaded long". Send me a PM if you are interested.

 

[wvuredneck09]

I don't see where all of that expense would be fair to you, however I like your idea. As fair as dies go could you not just use a redding body die and have the die trimmed so that you can slowly bump the shoulder back to wherever you'd like.

 

[redneckclimbing]

I tried that, by cutting off a .270 and trying to turn it into a .243 win. it only worked once out of 4 tries and it was a real pain in the butt.

My thoughts were that if you tried it before I did I wouldn't waste a bunch of money building a rife around this to find out it doesn't do what I want it to. But the offer stands if you change your mind. I understand that wildcats are not for everyone, and it is nice to just go to the store and buy some ammo off the shelf if you run out of time before the season.

 

[wvuredneck09]

wvuredneck-

I saw your post about the 7mm Hunting Rifle. I have an idea, if you're interested, that may help us both out. I have another thread started on here called 7mm SAUM Wildcat. Check it out, anyways my thoughts were if I bought the reamer and dies, I would let you use them in your rifle build if you kept me up to date on your load results. Worst case scenario if you didn't like the cartridge you could always come in behind it with either a SAUM or WSM reamer and not loose any barrel length.
My criteria with this wildcat were to shoot the 180 Berger at least 2850 (enough for elk out 600 no problem), while using the same amount of powder as a .284 Shehane (to lessen recoil, and have better barrel life than the SAUM or WSM), as well as fit in a short action with the 180 Berger "loaded long". Send me a PM if you are interested.

I ran the numbers on this idea. I decided on a OAL of 2.68 to allow for throat erosion and some wiggle room in AI short magazines (2.88"). For the 180 VLD's bearing surface to stay above the neck-shoulder junctions the shoulder would need to be bumped back 0.532 inches resulting in approx. 55.8 grains of H2O capacity. This is similar to the 7-08AI(56.4 grains) and is likely not adequate for the big 180's IMHO (also keep in mind that Berger has a 195 hybrid in the works). I also ran the calculations with the 168 VLD's (same goal OAL). For the 168's the shoulder would need to be bumped back 0.452 inches with a resulting capacity of 59.6 grains of H2O capacity. This is in between the 7-08AI(56.4 grains) and the 284(66.5 grains). This may be worth it to someone in the tactical arena but probably not worth the forming work for me. What does everyone else think of it?

 

[wvuredneck09]

BTW if someone has quickload and could run some est. velocities I would be interested to see what they come up with. Not sure what all dimensions you need but basically just take a 7mm WSM and bump the shoulder back as described leaving all angles the same. One would then just trim the neck down, probably leaving more than the normal short neck of the 7 WSM.

 

[wvuredneck09]

and there was silence.......

 

[TheSnake]

and there was silence.......

Crickets, dead crickets. If you don't get a reply, I can try to help you in a few weeks after Rodeo season here in Houston. I volunteer and am quite busy the month of March. When the time comes, you can PM me and I will call you and we can get this going.

 

[wvuredneck09]

haha thanks, just curious what quick load kicks out for those wildcats.