.35 Remington 150 grain PSP

[victorcharlie]

Stopped at the local wally world to catch the big clearance on cammo and such.....asked the dept. manager to discount a woolrich coat some more, which she did.....I've never been able to dicker at a wally world but I guess my skills are improving!  Maybe she thought I was "cute"?

  Anyway, because of the additional $20 buck she knocked off, when she asked if I need any thing else, I asked if she had any .35 remingtons.......she said she sure did so I told her to give me a box.........As the 150 grain cartridges aren't commonly seen, I didn't think any thing about it......I was a little suprised when I got home and found out they were not the 200 grain soft points I usually shoot.........pointed soft point in a tube magazine?  Naw....I don't think so.........

Well, as walmart has a no return policy on ammo, I figured the best thing to do was shoot them..........so, I spent an hour or so yesterday at the range.....

My Marlin is a 1977 336, precross bolt safety.......wearing a williams peep sight, and no scope........with a factory front sight.......50 yard groups were around a inch and a half, but the 150 grains shot about an inch lower than the 200 grain version....... My 336 likes them much better than the .357 diameter 158 grain pistol bullets which shoot like a shot gun out of my Marlin......recoil was about the same as the 200 grain........Didn't shoot groups at 100 yards as most of my deer hunting would put my shots at 50 yards or less.........I did set some milk jugs full of water at 100 yards and was hitting them consistantly from a standing, freehand position.......no doubt if you hit them, and you don't need to go check for holes!...Plenty good enough for hardwoods deer in the thick stuff.......

I'll stick with the 200 grain soft points but I'm glad to know the 150's shoot about as good but lower......maybe I'll make them my varmint load?  NOT

I'm thinking the 150 grain PSP must be somewhat similar to the new horndy load..........any body shot any of the new stuff from horndy out of there .35 yet?   I haven't seen any for sale around here yet.......come to think of it, I haven't seen it for a 30-30 yet either.........

[Cottonwood]

I have yet to see it in any of our gun shops around here either... looks like if you want it MidwayUSA has it

[victorcharlie]

I'm curious about it......but for my hunting.....thick hardwoods and pine thickets......where shot are short.....the 200 grain would be hard to beat....

Now, if it shot really good out of my marlin, then I'd think about switching....

Most of the range reports I've read coming from 30-30 users doesn't seem to do much to improve accracy over what the standard remington ammo is doing.......

[Lone Star]

The 150-grain .35 Remington load has been used and loaded for many years.  The "pointed" bullet is perfectly safe in tube magazines (Remington and Marlin agree), no worry there. Tests show it to give similar penetration to the 200-grain bullet but may be a bit tougher; it is a good load for medium game.  It is not an appropriate varmint bullet.  I've used these bulk bullets on Kodiak blacktails out of my T/C loaded to 2330 fps, and they killed very well.  They are popular with handgun hunters using the .357 Maximum.  Go here to learn more:
http://www.marlinowners.com/board/viewtopic.php?t=5522&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

[Big Paulie]

Ditto:  The pointed soft points by the big 3 in .30-30 and .35 rem are specifically designed for use in the lever actions with tube magazines.  I have used them for over 35 years.

[Cottonwood]

I just stick to the 200-gr Rem core-lock bullets, I'm really not interested in changing.

[RugerNo3]

The 150gr PSP bullet is discontinued by Remington. Don't get to bigga designs on them. A gentleman that posts on AR dot com got a special run made and sold them off by the 1000's. They were intended for the spiral tube pump guns, but not popularly used.

[Lone Star]

The 150gr PSP bullet is discontinued....

....as a reloading component, but not in factory ammo where it is still quite popular.  I bought several hundred three years ago from the fellow mentioned above - he might be persuaded to approach Remington for another run of 50,000 if there is enough interest.  50,000 units was the minimum order Remington wanted before making them.

I'm not certain about the exact history of the 150-grain bullet.  I have a pretty extensive file on the .35 Remington, and I can't find much historical information relating to it.  The 150 was pre-dated by a 170-grain pointed bullet which was discontinued by the 1920s (while the spiral-magazined M14/M141 stayed in production until 1950).  Some authors of the time considered the 150 load to be intended for bolt rifles, but since the number of bolt guns so chambered was quite limited, I have to wonder about that.  Their use in the box magazines of the M8/81 makes moer sense to me.

That said, the 150s are perfectly safe in the 336's tube magazine.  It is not the "good for nothing" loading that some of the slick writers (who never used it) seemed to like to parrot, in fact it may be a better game bullet than the 200s in some instances (not long range BTW).  Perhaps if enough of us wrote Midway asking for the bullet, they'd get Remington to make another batch...

[RugerNo3]

Since I posted, I checked Rem's web site and they still have it listed as loaded ammo. Interestingly enough, 25 or thirty yr ago a gun writer worked up some loads for this bullet in 9mm Luger and used them in a Ruger BH with the 9mm cylinder. Got around 1050fps as I recall for novelty varmint loads. I believe it was in Guns & Ammo since that was a subscription I had for a while. Might make an interesting 357 Max load.