How to tighten up my group.

[lefty15]

I have a Tikka .300 Win Mag, I am shooting 168 Gr Triple Shocks with 78Gr of Reloader19 with Federal match grade magnum primers and Winchester brass. Part of the problem that I have is that I can not make my bullets any longer that 3.34" because of my clip.
If I were to neck size my brass will this do anything to help the accuracy.
Any help that you guys can provide would be great.

 

[James Jones]

neck sizing might help another thing you may want to try is another bullet. The tripple shock bullets are supposed to be alot easier than the old XC bullets but their are alot of others that might shoot a little bit better you may also try a little heavier bullet.
you might also want to try differant powders the R-19 is pretty fast for the 300Win mag I've had good results with R-22. You might also want to try using a regular large rifle primer with the R-19

 

[rotorhead]

I would try hodgen H-1000 I worked up a load for a buddy last year and Hogden 1000 produced the best with 180 grain Sierras.
I haven't ever been able to get the barnes to shoot as accurate as the Sierras and I have never had a Sierra fail to kill what I was shooting. They are half the price as well. The other bullet I would try is the Nosler Acubond 180. This is an accurate deadly bullet in about anything. Barnes is revisiting some of their designs for improving the accuracy but I do not know how far they have come.

Hope this helps, RH

 

[lefty15]

I shot H1000 in the Browning .300 WM that I used to have, and I had terrible results. I do have some left, and maybe with my new Tikka it would be different. As for the Accu-bonds I will never shot them again I had horrible results with Accu-bonds last year. The Accu-Bonds were fragmenting badly on impact.
With the load I am shooting 168GR Triple shock and 78Gr Reloader19 I am shooting consistantly 1" groups at 100 yards, but I want to make this alot better.
I will give the H1000 a try. Thanks for the advice.
How do the SMK'S work on animals? I want to shoot everything from Whitetail,Muledeer,Moose, and Elk with this load.

 

[Hired Gun]

I have always had good luck neck sizing only. I use Lee Collet dies on everything I can. When they start getting hard to close the bolt I will give them a slight bump with my full length die.

If you had trouble with the Accubond fragmenting the light jacketed non-bonded SMK will be a complete disaster. H-1000 is too slow for a 300WM. A 300WM should do well with a 180 grain bullet and IMR-4831, H-4831 or RL-22. You should be able to get 3100 fps. I have always had good luck with CCI-250 primers.

 

[lefty15]

I have a Tikka T3 Varmint Stainless Synthetic. From what I can see from alot of other posts .300 WM's like a longer than factory bullet, I am limited in the length that I can make my bullets because of the clip design. Is there a way that I would be able to somehow make my stock suitable to accept a larger magazine, whick will allow me to lengthen my overall length?

 

[kraky]

That load sounds like it could be plenty warm. What would happen if you back it down about 50-75 fps. Or you could try seating the bullet deeper by...say......020" increments.
(Even though you are seated deep already....it doesn't really matter)

If you want to tighten your groups you'll have to change your harmonics a bit...hopefully you'll get a good reaction and not go the other way.

Also maybe consider another primer---if you are using a WLRM or Fed 215 try going to a milder primer like a cci magnum primer.

 

[Desert Fox]

Reloader 19 is too fast for 300. For 180 grain bullet,start with 80 grain of H1000 and work your way up. I used Federal 215M primer exclusively with good result on H1000. Don't worry about the setting depth. Right now I'm developing load for my 300 Win Mag using Barnes 180 grain TSX. With 74 grain of IMR 7828, I was able to get velocity in excess of 3000 fps on my Model 70 Winchester Laredo. Accuracy is excellent. Goodluck.

 

[lefty15]

My buddy ahs been using Reloader19 in his .300WM since it has been new, and his gun shoots awesome.
What makes the Reloader22 better than the Reloader19 for .300WM'S??

 

[James Jones]

R-22 is a slower burn rate and allows a bit more powder wich makes for better ES numbers. It might not workm as well as R-19 with the light bullets but I get the best accuracy and highest velocity with it and the 180-200 gr class bullets. My only gripe is that it does vary from lot to lot so each new bottle needs to be reduced and a new load worked up.

 

[wapiti13]

Lefty 15, All the suggestions are good, but have you checked for concentricity? If bullets are not straight, everything goes to pot. Your seating die might be at fault. Barnes bullets like to jump so you need to find the sweet spot on your OAL. Good luck.

 

[lefty15]

What do I need to do to check the concentricity, and with what kind of tool? As you can see I am very new to reloading, I have only been reloading rifle shells for about 3 years.
Also to Kraky are you saying that I should seat my overall length to 3.32"? Will this help tighten things up?

 

[lefty15]

Will the type of brass that I am using impact my group?

 

[kraky]

Lefty....any small changes MIGHT make a difference....either positive or negative. The result is unknown till you experiment. You could try a different primer......all mag primers are not the same. A cci 250 is milder than a wlrm or a fed 215. Different brass might have slightly less or more case capacity affecting your barrel harmonics. And yes seating deeper might improve your accuracy.
It's to bad that Browning did a crappy job of porting the Boss as it really did work. It let the shooter adjust the barrel harmonics to the load. Well those of us that don't have the boss have to find the best harmonics of the barrel and we can do that with small changes in our loading.
Have you ever chrono'd that load???
You might back off 50 fps with a slightly lighter powder charge and find a "sweet spot".
Bottom line is (I think you said) you have a gun that groups 1". That gun will harvest any game out to 300 yds that a .75" gun will. If you feel you need a bit better accuracy go for it.....you always know that you have that 1" groouping load in your back pocket to fall back on during hunting season.....nobody here would sneeze at that with a high quality hunting bullet.