Not about deer...

Last month I got a great idea... since it's illegal in WA to use full metal jacket (FMJ) ammo I needed to find something that was affordable enough to practice with but also suitable for hunting. The 203gr Silver Bear ammo isn't expensive but it's 203 grain- the closest I have for practice is 182gr Bulgarian milsurp.

Enter Midway USA. I had talked about reloading earlier this year when I was really, really into guns and their gadgets. With that in mind I ordered a basic Lee loading press (the 40th anniversary pack that included the reloading manual), a bullet puller, the loading dies for 7.62x54R and 300 Speer 150gr soft point spitzer point Japanese 303 (.311) bullets. Phew! That's a lot of jargon.

I read the manual while waiting for a ferry on the night before opening day of late season. That's a LOT of info, but frankly it's mostly how great the Lee company is and the history of their products. It's also fairly intimidating- you can see where the company is coming from.
I put the press in the closet with my hunting stuff- I won't be doing any 'yote hunting this year so I don't need any soft points. Plus I need to figure out which of my Mosins is most accurate.

Speaking of which, I went with the .311 bullets because when I slugged the bores of my rifles, only the Finn's were at .310. The worst was the M44 at .314. So I thought I'd split the difference and go up .001" to help fill that gap. When I took the new Finn to the range it was as inaccurate as any of the others until about shot 10. I think they need some fouling to fill in the grooves to help with stabilizing the pressures in the barrel. The Bulgy milsurp is actually .3105 so I wasn't doing myself that much of a favor (but every little bit helps, I suppose).

This morning I decided that I needed to do something. I'm tired of reading, video games make me feel like I'm wasting too much time (plus they make me loopy when I go to do something else), there's nothing on TV but I'm out of propane so I can't forge anything (it's been snowing and I think there's at least 6" of snow out there- Artemis (my car) wouldn't make it to the gas station and back). Reloading it is.

The only issue I had was that I needed a crescent wrench to lock the dies in place and even then there was a little movement. The Forster collet bullet puller pulled the bullets like a charm. It needed less than a 1/4 turn to lock onto the bullet and then to release it. The Lee bullet loading die inserted the bullets like a charm and the instructions with the Lee dies gave me good info about the minimum bullet lengths. I measured against the Bulgy for comparison- five of them had a 0.0035" variance. Mine had about 0.0015" variance.

I didn't load my own powder or seat my own primers because I don't have any brass that's reloadable. I could make a hydraulic piston to press out the Berdan primers but then I can't find Berdan primers to replace them. But overall I'm pretty proud of the steps I took and I hope to go to the range before the end of the year to give them a test.

Deer 5- dude at range 0

Well, it's not just me. I went to try my new Finn M39 today (I've had it for at least two weeks but haven't had a chance to get to the range). Since the cease-fires were being measured in glacial epochs I got to talking to the guy next to me, Dave Something. He was shooting a 6.5mm and a 30-40 Krag to prep for a hunting trip in Texas. That 30-40 is 109 years old and put five out of five in the black- even his "flier" was in the black!
So he was telling me about how he's been hunting in WA for at least the last twenty years and every year he's come home successful- and apparently without much effort... except for the last two years. Last year and this he didn't see any real sign, no deer and obviously came home empty handed. That's part of why he's heading to TX to a ranch that his uncle owns, or his uncle's friend owns or some such. Something about 60% die off a couple years ago during winter... I sincerely hope it gets better for all of us who aren't spending just one weekend out in the woods.

Back to the Finn... it was spectacular! Once I put about 10 rounds through its shiny bore it started to ... dare I say... group! It actually started to put rounds in the black. That's good news because it's tiring to go to the range and shoot and shoot and shoot but have the rounds going all over the place. I slugged the bores for the other 4 and the other Finn is at .310. I assume this is the same. The worst of the other Mosins is at .314! I'm not sure what to do about that but I'm hoping that using .311 bullets and not cleaning all of the fouling out will help. Of course, they need to be cleaned each time because the Berdan primers are corrosive, but I won't go so far as to use the JB Bore Cleaner until all the rifinling is shiny and the patches come out clean. Apparently a little fouling is good.