My 270 load of choice is 55 grains of...

by cas, Tuesday, December 10, 2024, 17:20 (11 days ago) @ AaronB

..6.5Staball. It was my powder of choice two years ago when I was doing "load development" because, well... I had a lot of it.

55 grains of it shot a 130 Ballistic Tip good enough. And since I was short on time and good enough was good enough, it was good enough.

I found it did like a magnum primer a whole lot better. Off hand I don't recall the velocities. I put a Trijicon scope with an amber triangle on it, so not the greatest for shooting tiny groups. It's Steyr SBS with a horribly pitted barrel. With a well cleaned barrel it'll shoot 3/4 MOA groups. Then somewhere between 15 and 20 shots it will open up to 7-8 MOA.

So last month when I went to shoot the new to me HuskyHigh Standard, that's the load I tried. It was cold, it was raining hard. I was having a hard time seeing the waterlogged target at 100 yards. And as much as I love the old TV View scope, when I'd make an adjustment that should have moved the POI about an inch, inch and a half, it was moving 5 or 6 inches. So I finally moved the target in to fifty yards, the last three loaded rounds I had went into a group about the size of a dime. "hey now!"

It made me sad, but when I got home I took the scope off. I put on a crappy Bushnell Banner that was probably the first scope I ever bought in 1988. I took it off a Ruger No.1 in .243 because I wanted a smaller, lower power scope. When I did the rifle "suddenly" shot much better than it had for the prior 20 years. So putting it on a lightweight .270 is probably just as big a mistake as trying the old Redfeild.