I'm still shaking my head. Went to the range yesterday to fire some test loads for my ruger 41 mag, Ruger 357 and Encore 243. The 41 mag loads were 210 gr home cast using B-Dot and could barely get them into 6" at 25 yds. 357's were 158 gr GC home cast and 125 gr. rem JHP over W296. 38's were same cast over 296. Could barely keep the 357 & 38's on paper. The worst groups I've ever shot were never 1/2 this bad. Assumed it must be the shooter so I started to shoot them Russian roulete style to see if I was flinching and pulling shots....nope.... every trigger pull seemed near perfect resulting in the same shotgun group. the bottom end load on the 38's is the same as I have been using as plinker loads for some time and are normally reasonably accurate. The 357 were with new Starline brass. One thing for sure. the sights on the 357 (vaquero) are getting filed. Every load, whether 357 or 38, including factory loads has shot 6-8" low and 1-3" left at 25yds from this gun.
On the up side the 243 shooting 72gr Barnes shot a .70 vertical group with the first load I tried. I don't think there was .1 variation vertically. That may not be great for you benchrest shooters but it is pretty good for me. The cast bullets were all from the same lot of bullets used in previous loads that grouped fine. Leading was nearly nonexistent and doesn't apear to be a factor. Halfway through testing I also paid more attention to my grip but that didn't seem to make any difference either. I could understand a few of the loads doing this but not all. Will probably just have to retest on another day and see what happens. Maybe guns just don't like the 296.
