My wife shoots a .223 Rem for deer hunting. Her rifle is a Ruger Hawkeye Compact. Her shots are 200 yards max, with most at 100. I currently load Sierra 65 gr. SBT Gamekings for her. Results so far are good, but always looking for better. I recently purchased some 55 gr. Barnes TTSX to try. I went to Barnes website for load data. They are suggesting 25.2 as a starting load and 28.0 as max when using CFE223 powder. I opened my QuickLoad program and it shows 26.8 as a do not use load @55317 psi. I always start low and work up watching for all signs of pressure and carefully measuring my fired cartridge cases. I will do the same in this case, however I'm curious if anyone with Barnes Reloading Data experience finds that they tend to show max loads at the upper end. I most often use Berger data and I generally find it to be quite conservative, for obvious reasons I'm sure.
Barnes Reloading Data
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Thanks for your reply. I have 6 cartridges loaded up in .3 increasing increments. May be a few days before I get them fired. I'll let you know how that goes.
Wedgy
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Not sure what their load data says now but I have found the Barnes like a rather long jump, like 0.050" or more to keep the pressure lower. I have switched most of my rifles over to Hammer Bullets as I have found them to have almost zero sensitivity to seating depth, run faster per bullet weight than Barnes and better terminal performance. I have shot Barnes for many years in many cartridges.
