Mild .500 Magnum rounds? Anybody load .500 Mag with Trail Boss?

[John C]

I don't own a .500 magnum (yet). If (when) I get one, I want to shoot it more than I could shooting only magnum rounds. When I get a new gun, I like to put 500 or so rounds through it getting to know the gun and its quirks. Also, I'm not a big recoil hound, so a milder load for actually shooting (vs. hunting) would be nice.

Looking at the Hodgdon data, I see the info for Trail Boss shows a range of 7.0 gr to 10.0 gr for a 440 gr LGC bullet. The velocities are a whopping 643 to 799 FPS!

Has anyone loaded Trail Boss in the .500 magnum? How do these low velocity rounds shoot? Does the bullet even stabilize at these velocities?

Thanks!

-John

 

[plinky]

I have had a couple .500s and used Hodgdon Titegroup for light loads. Bullet was the Speer 325 gr plated HP. That bullet is made for the .50AE and doesn't have a crimping groove but I gave them a moderate roll crimp anyway. Never saw the bullets try to move. For a light load it's still a helluva thing. Accuracy was not quite as good as a full power H110 load (with a 400 gr Sierra JHP). Might have been too fast for the plated bullet.


Load A: Starline brass, Speer 325 gr JHP, WLR primer, Titegroup 20gr. loaded in 2005

8" bbl. 1552 fps/ 1738 fpe SD 16.37 fps
4" bbl. 1268 fps/ 1160 fpe SD 14.2 fps

I got some Trail Boss but never got around to trying it.