I have a hard time turning down a good deal on an Encore or Contender barrel. Some time ago, I bought a stainless steel Thompson/Center Prohunter Encore barrel chambered in 300 Winchester Magnum from “arrowstar” right here on Graybeard Outdoors. It was purported to be unfired and, when I received it, it was pristine. Best of all, arrowstar apparently has very good taste since the barrel came with a Warne Maxima stainless steel base already installed.
Today I finally got around to removing a 7mm/08 barrel I’ve been shooting and replacing it with my new 300 Winchester Magnum barrel. Since the Warne Maxima base is what I use on most of my Encore and Contender barrels, it was a simple matter that took maybe a minute to install a Leupold 4.5-14X VX III scope. I also have a hard time passing up a good deal on a Leupold or Nightforce scope and had acquired the scope on another forum.
Needing instant gratification in seeing how the new barrel would shoot, I decided to load up some cartridges. What bullet to use? I had a box of 190 Sierra BTHP match bullets from back in the time a box probably cost less than 10 bucks. It’s not a weight I usually use so this seemed like a good chance to use some of them.
Then there was the matter of choosing a powder and primer. I consulted the Nosler manual and found that it lists only loads for Nosler bullets and the closest it came to the bullet I was using in weight were 180 and 200 gr. bullets. RL-22 was listed as being most accurate with 180 gr. bullets and H4831 as the most accurate with 200 gr. bullets. I decided to go with RL-22 and extrapolated to get a reasonable starting load (i.e., 69.0 gr.) for my 190 gr. bullets. I know I should have gone right out and bought a Sierra manual but I didn’t.
Which primer to use? I decided to use CCI 250 (a large rifle magnum primer for those that don't know) since I think it’s one of the best primers out there for magnum cartridges and even cartridges of medium size like the 308 Winchester.
Lastly, I needed some cases. Now ladies, sit down and hold on to your seats. I used new brass and I didn’t resize or trim it! I confess, I took ONE case and ran it through my Lyman case length gauge and it passed. My only concession to case prep was chamfering the case mouths since that makes the bullets easier to seat. The chamfer tool also rounded out the mouth of one of the cases that was bent.
Now I know, that reloading new cases without trimming or resizing them is EXTREMELY risky and that I was taking my life into my hands but that was only the half of it. They were Nosler seconds that weren’t weight sorted and were probably swept off the floor or taken out of a trash can. Who knows, maybe Nosler flushed them down some toilet and fished them out of a sewer. You never know what bullet manufacturers will do when they aren’t watched closely.
Next on the agenda was setting up the Redding 300 Winchester Magnum dies I also bought from Nosler. I brought my Encore to my reloading area so I could chamber cartridges to be sure the bullets were seated deep enough to easily chamber but not too far off the lands.
One thing you should know about Encores and belted cases. If you push the cartridge straight in, the belt will probably get held up on the extractor making it impossible to chamber the round. If you, however, give a little clockwise twist to the cartridge whilst pushing toward the chamber, the belt will slip over the extractor as slick as snot on a glass door knob.
I progressively seated a bullet little by little until the Encore action closed easily with a snap. Then, leaving the die at the same place I seated another bullet and made sure the action would still close easily. I marked both primers with a blue permanent marker; those would be the initial sight in cartridges since they were most likely to be the least uniform of the cartridges I would be loading.
I loaded up 10 cartridges with 69.0 gr. of RL-22. I would have loaded some cartridges with a little heavier weights of powder but I didn’t have time today.
I headed out to the range (my back yard) and set up a target. My first shot was from about 10 yards. When a scope hasn’t been sighted in it makes no sense to shoot much further than that the first time since if you tried it from 100 yards your chance of hitting the target would be about the same as your wife volunteering to go out and buy you an 8 lb. jug of powder.
The first shot was about 4 inches to the left of the orange target but the elevation was right on. Four inches at 10 yards means there will need to be a LOT of correction at 100 yards. I made a correction of 20 clicks to the right and moved back to 50 yards. The second bullet hit about 8 inches high and 10 inches to the left. It’s a good thing I had a large cardboard backer since the shot was off the target and I wouldn’t have seen it otherwise. I made another correction of 20 clicks to the right and about the same down and fired another round. It was also a bit left and high but in the black so I made another scope adjustment and moved back to 100 yards.
The fourth shot was pretty much centered but a bit high so I made another scope adjustment and shot a 3 shot group which you can see in the first photo. I made another scope adjustment and shot a second 3 shot group pictured in the second photo.
So, 10 rounds fired and a load adequate for big game hunting. Will I play some more with the load? Definitely since I think this barrel will be capable of 3 shot groups in the 0.5 to 0.75 inch range. I’ll try some with an increased powder charge to see if the groups tighten up and may try some Federal GM215M primers. I doubt changing to a different powder will help.
