THE HANDLOADING BENCH
308 Winchester Rides Again Part 2 By Laurie Holland
temperature effects on our match ammo – although I increasingly believe we need to become much more aware of them – but this is a major preoccupation in the USA covering both ends of the temperature scales.
With most medium and large game shooting taking place during the winter, seriously low temperatures may be encountered especially in the inland regions of continental North America and northern Europe. Ignition (un)reliability and reduced MVs become issues when temperatures fall below zero and some propellants are more affected than others – why some handloading manuals recommend that magnum primers should be routinely used in ammunition loaded with ball powders.
An American gun writer described in print some years back how he missed an apparently certain shot with his 44 Magnum revolver at a coyote that was openly stalking livestock in a ranch farmyard one bitterly cold winter’s day, the predator made incautious by extreme hunger during a spell of exceptionally cold weather. Drawing the revolver that he’d carried holstered while working outdoors for some hours and taking careful aim with it rested on a fencepost, he was astonished to do nothing more than scare the animal away, the report being ‘wrong’ too. Subsequent testing with a distant rock as a target showed that MVs had dropped to such an extent that bullets hit the ground 20 or 30 yards in front of the muzzle. The cause was the use of standard primers with his usual heavy compressed charge of H110 ball powder allied to the temperature, a load that had always given excellent results before.
SR Magnum and BR primers are best suited to this application.
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