Del,

Jim Carmichael once said, "Never shoot your pet load over a chrono, you'll loose faith in it." I have seen far more loads that don't live up to the book than those that do.

Barnes has been very close as has Hornady. I find the other guys tend to shoot stuff through test barrels long enough to pole vault with! Hornady nearly always shoots their data through a real gun. Let me know how your .338/06 loads turn out.

Cheers!

Bee

I shoot over a chronograph a lot and always get surprised BOTH ways. Last time at the range, my neighbor brought his .243 that he had been using for deer hunting since he was a kid. He shoots about one shot a year and had a box of factory 90g bullets he thought were pretty fast. They chronographed at 2700 fps. I have seen a lot of factory ammo chrono well below the stated velocity but I don't blame them because people are shooting the same load in everything on earth. I was also surprised to see my 135g .300 Dakota bullets exceed 3850 fps before I even hit the maximum load with a fairly light recoil and no signs of pressure. That is a pretty hot .350 Rem Mag load and should be good. I suspect that you may get better accuracy with IMR4064 in that 200 grain bullet but you would sacrifice a little speed at around 2850 fps with benchrest primers. Looks like you have a real contest going on there for the best elk rifle for your trip. Good luck and good to hear from you.

Yes, a couple of times. I worked up what I thought would be a mild turkey load for my .223 with a 50 grain bullet that turned out somewhere in the neighborhood of 3100 fps. Accurate, but a bit too fast. Vice versa in my .220 Swift, it came out a bit slower than expected, don't remember the exact figures.

Del- I once chronographed some Winchester 170 gr 30-30 loads. Three rounds through a 20" Win. 94 barrel and the average was(as I recall)1900 fps. I was stunned! The published velocity was 2200fps. My handloads seem to run pretty close to the velocity listed in good manuals.Your 350 load should anchor anything that you come across.

ishawooa

All that sounds reasonable, but pressure is relative to velocity. I'd bet you are exceeding 65,000 psi to get that speed out of a 168 gr bullet. But maybe not an unsafe pressure for the rifle you are shooting. I know that exceeding 65,000 by a good margin will not damage a Weatherby action, but I don't do it intentionally. Might shoot that hottie over another chrony to check it out. You probably already thought of that.

best regards,
WMH

WA Hunter, if my friend's strain gauge is correct I am about 62,000 which is damned enough. The main thing I don't like about the extra long mags and short mags of recent years is that the pressures are way up there compared to our older maggies. I wonder if the magnum developers didn't get things right the first time with the original belted Wetherby-Winchester-Remington, etc. shortened magnums on the H & H case. Of course the belt is pretty worthless but not as much of a bother as some would have you believe.
Del in KS, I settled on 92 grs of Retumbo from Hodgdon's manual. I loaded up to 94 but experienced ever so slight difficulty in bolt lift so backed off with the same velocity regardless of the amount of powder. Walt Berger thought this load should be a bit hot so I am interested to see his new manual which was supposed to be out in December but was not available the last time I checked. Perhaps it is on the market by now.

Both Hornady 3rd Edition, Lyman and cross referencing with IMR data using Federal and Winchester Primers have always been very close