Field Report, today, '06 38-55 TM (thus the small neck chamber) with an old El Paso Weaver K-3 scope, new production 38-55 WW brass (shorter than the old orig. brass), .379 248gr. 'old style 38-55 bullet of Lyman #2 alloy, 'pan lubed with nothing fancy and over 18.0gr. IMR4227.
The brass had the neck 'lightly dressed' on a spinning emory wheel to reduce the dia.'just a tad'. Each shot was with the same stick of brass reloaded at the shooting bench without resizing. The seating depth of the bullets was not fine tuned to get each 'into the rifling', that is, the seating die was set to get the bullet in the case far enough to chamber up cleanly and still extract without difficulty. Each was still far enough out of the case neck that the 'crimp groove' was well exposed.
As you can tell, these are not the finely crafted benchrest target type reloads.
Offhand at 86yd. regular hits on 3"x3" steel square plates.
Offhand, No problem hitting and toppling with authority 1' steel buffalo silhouettes.
Offhand, 125ish yds out in the cornfield stubble, bullets went right where the rifle was looking upon ignition at various 'targets of opportunity' (not too big, not too small, but juuust right).
No, I didnt shoot any paper target groups to brag on 'this or that' number of inches, just shot at reasonably sized targets in the real world and did as well or better than my friends did off the bench.
Gun did splendidly, I did at least OK, and had a VERY good day!
BTW, Would I have done as well with the 30-30, probably, except those bigger dia. and heavier 38-55 bullets have a lot of 'thwack' in them, without abusing me (old whiplash injury) and really look cool.
