At least the first half of it. It looks as if it will start raining again this evening and apparently for the next 40 days and nights. But I don't care! I burned 4 hours of comp time this morning and visited the range with the .44mag, 357 mag and the 45/70 barrels. I started out with the .357 and some 158 gr Mag Tec SPs, loaded long and some Hornady 180 gr XTP, also loaded long. Both loads were with H110. The Mag Tec did considerably better than a similar load at a normal length. Not great but about 2 inches at 50 yards. Surprisingly the XTPs did not do as well as some Rem 180 HP, also loaded long, that I had tried the last time I went to the range. Over all not quite as good as the long Mag Tecs.
I took the old 45/70 barrel along with 5 rounds of 14 gr Trail Boss under 300 gr OT hard cast. At 50 yards 4 of the bullets made a ragged hole with the 5th about an inch and a half from the others. When I loaded the five rounds the night before when I seated the bullets I noticed that one of the bullets did not snug up to the brass as did the others. I checked and saw that 4 of the cases were WW and one was Hornady. The one Hornady case was courtesy of some kind person that left about 40 pieces of brass in the brass box at the range. I'll have to check to see if all the Hornady brass is that much shorter than the WW. Don't know if that was why I had that one slightly off shot. I just wish all my guns shot like that 45/70.
The last barrel I tried was the 44 mag. I had a bout 30 rounds of 180 gr OT hard cast over AA#2. These did 'OK" about 2 1/2 inches at 50 yards. Next was 10 rounds of Mag Tec 240 gr over Blue Dot. Those were all over the place! There was a good 8 inches between some shots. Thinking something might have gone wrong I pulled out some 180 gr Xtp loads that shot so well the last trip out and put 5 rounds in the same hole.
I did experience trouble with both guns not wanting to extract or release spent brass. I guess I need to give each chamber a good cleaning and make sure they are clean and dry before I go out again. The good news was that I got something to shoot really well with each gun, and I had the nice sunny morning off.
RJ
