"Youth load" for .270?

[Rick Courtright]

Hi,

A friend's son just got his first rifle, a Remington 725 in .270 Win. Mom's picking it up for him this week (good ol' CA 10 day wait, ya know?) It will be interesting to see how well someone's cared for it over the last 50 years!

Anyway, the boy's 16, fairly tall but a bit on the light side. He's never shot a center fire rifle that I'm aware of. I've never loaded for the .270, but figured starting him off w/ some handloads in the neighborhood of the factory "low recoil" type ammo would be a good starting point vs the generally pricier and/or stouter, factory offerings.

Any suggestions?

Rick C

 

[427mach1]

I've seen hand load data for reduced recoil but I can't recall where I saw it. If it were my son, I would pick the lightest bullet available (100 grain, perhaps) and loading some minimum loads from your reloading manual. My Hornady manual shows minimum velocity of 2900 fps for a 100 grain bullet, putting it right in the middle of 243 territory.

Some people don't like letting others shoot their handloads. Some people don't like shooting someone else's reloads. Be very careful.....

 

[Tellico]

http://www.hodgdon.com/PDF/Trail%20Boss%20Reduced%20Loads%20R&P.pdf

 

[kelbro]

Hodgdon has reduced loads listed using H4895. That's how I started my son who was also tall and lanky. I put factory loads in when we got to the deer stand and he never noticed the difference.

http://www.hodgdon.com/PDF/H4895%20Reduced%20Rifle%20Loads.pdf

 

[#1rugerman]

My son killed his first deer at 7 with my Ruger #1 .270 with 150gr bullets, the next year he killed one with a Ruger #1 7mm mag with a 160gr bullet. They don't kick when there is hair in the scope. But he flinched a bit shooting them off the bench, so I built a stand up bench and got him a past recoil pad and I let him shoot at 2 liter drink bottles filled with water. The stand up bench let him roll with the recoil, the past pad spread the recoil over a larger area and the exploding bottles made it fun. It also helps if the gun fits well and make sure to use hearing protection, loud noises will cause a reactive flinch. If he is going to hunt with the reduced load I would rather use a premium light weight hunting bullet not a varmint bullet and load it to regular velocity. Good luck with your project.

 

[Mobuck]

IMR 4895 is the powder I used to develop reduced loads for a 25/06. This endorsed by Sierra bullets so I'm sure it's acceptable. Better check with them but IIRC it was around 66% of the starting load.
One thing to be mindful of is bullet choice. I found that even lighter "big game" type bullets didn't expand as expected in my reduced loads. That's when I went directly to Sierra. They recommended the 90 grain HPBT(.257) and it worked fine on several deer.

 

[Sugar River]

+1 for the H4895 reduced loads. You can go as light as 60% of any Max published load.
This is according to Hodgdon.


Pete

 

[Rick Courtright]

Hi,

Thanks for all the suggestions! I've got H-4895 on the shelf, so downloaded Hodgdon's sheet on it. Looks pretty versatile for what I think we'll "need." We'll be killing a bunch of paper before anything else...

Now I've got to talk to the boy's Mom and see how she feels about teaching him to reload vs just buying factory. Her budget's tight, but I've got enough spare equipment to make a portable "kit" to take to their house and supervise him w/o much cash outlay on their part.

This will be a bit of a new adventure for me. I've helped people w/ little reloading situations before, but this will be my first "brand new student" experience. I just wish I could go back and have someone watch over MY shoulder when I got started reloading: I made some mistakes, a couple kinda serious (still have the damaged gun as a reminder.) So I hope to do better for this lad!

Rick C

 

[Jimbo357mag]

This will be a bit of a new adventure for me. I've helped people w/ little reloading situations before, but this will be my first "brand new student" experience. I just wish I could go back and have someone watch over MY shoulder when I got started reloading: I made some mistakes, a couple kinda serious (still have the damaged gun as a reminder.) So I hope to do better for this lad!

A youth that wants to shoot and load is a rarity. Having somebody willing to teach a youth to do that is even more rare. Congrats on your little project.

 

[Rick Courtright]

A youth that wants to shoot and load is a rarity. Having somebody willing to teach a youth to do that is even more rare. Congrats on your little project.

Hi,

Thanks, Jimbo! I'm sure it will be a challenge to break down everything into something "sensible" for him. After so many years, I seem to have fallen into "automatic mode" w/ a lot of stuff I do, so it's probably gonna be a good refresher for that last working brain cell to "start from scratch" again. Just hope I don't find too many bad habits have crept in, ya know?

Rick C

 

[JM]

Rick,
Good on you for helping him out and "sponsoring" the reloading effort. I think that is very likely to snag his long term interest.