I do a lot of shooting for groups at 100 yards. I wondered if I could find a recipe for low impact rounds appropriate for plinking. The Hodgdon website features instructions for developing reduced loads using H4895 so I decided to try this plan on my 260 Rem. My intent was to use 123 grain bulk bullets from Midsouth Shooters. Hodgdon says that if you can find recipe using H4895 for your bullet and cartridge, you can safely follow their procedure for reduced loads. I located has a recipe for H4895 in one of my yearly Hodgdon Reload Manuals. The starting load was 35.0 grains; max load was 38.0 grains. The formula is to take 60% of the max load as the basis for your reduced load. This load is expected to yield a velocity of approximately 1800 fps. I loaded up 20 cartridges with 22.8 grains of H4895. I took them to the range today and was very happy with the results. A Labradar pegged the first round at 1803 fps! The average of the five shot group was 1781 fps. Recoil feels like roughly half of my full loads. Noise was less sharp and more muffled. My groups were not spectacular but I expect that further tuning might identify an accuracy node (or possibly several) as I move up in charge weight. I am happy about the success of this experiment - I ended up with a promising load for short-distance work like the 100 yard range at my local club.
Caution:
Instructions warn that this plan only works for bullets and cartridges for which there is a published recipe using H4895!
Caution:
Instructions warn that this plan only works for bullets and cartridges for which there is a published recipe using H4895!
