Ugly Sauce
Member
- Joined
- Oct 26, 2020
- Messages
- 6,255
I have this old SMLE. Got it for $50.00. It's a 1943 LongBranch in perfect condition. Someone down the line made a "sporter" out of it, so I just kept it for years planning to make a No.5 out of it, but never did. Anyhow, it's nice and light, seven pounds one ounce, and looks kind of like a classic English "stalking rifle" so I thought I'd add it to my exploring/trekking/hiking rifle battery.
So I loaded up some Sierra 180 grainers for it and sighted it in. I think those will put the hurt on grizz at bad breath distance, or drop a deer or elk, or even a moose if I got lost, injured, and hungry enough deep in the mountains. Also have an old box of Remington 180 grain Core-Lokt round noses, need to see if they print to the same place as the Sierras. Either one of those bullets will take care of business.
Usually, when I'm packing a stout rifle, I pair it with sidearm to take small game with. A .22, .38 Special with shot loads, .44spl with shot loads, or a .36 caliber revolver. Sometimes a M95 Nagant revolver. (super accurate with the .32ACP cylinder) But, it never hurts to have some small game loads for the rifle, right? Right!
Remembering that I had made some in the past I dug them out. They were loaded with a 120 grain gas-check cast bullet and eight grains of Unique. I shot them off and found them to be crazy accurate, and by holding the front sight up where I had a good repeatable reference point, they hit dead on at grouse and rabbit range. (10-20 yards)
All good, right? Wrong. Then I ran a few over the chronograph. Dang. 1350fps. Not so good for small game. So then I gets to thinking, about five grains of Unique is as far as I dare go down in the .303 case, but what if I loaded a 180 grain cast bullet over that five grains...would the combination of the two slow it down to 900fps or slower?
Bingo! It did. Around 830fps or so. That should work. I've heard of people in the past using a big full weight bullet at low velocity (in rifles) and getting good results on small game, as it just drills cleanly through.
One other bonus is that the 120's wouldn't feed from the magazine anyhow, no biggie, but the 180's do, so I can just carry an extra mag with the cast bullet loads in it, and just change mags if I see something small and tasty I want to shoot.
So, that's what I did today. Thanks for listening!