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Cooked up a hunting handload today for the wife's 92 Rossi Trapper and my Old Vaquero, both in 45 Long Colt.
This load is an adaptation of one of John Linebaugh's personal loads* using a 250 grain Hornady XTP over 13.0 grains of Hodgdons HS6 powder. This load is too heavy for anything except the big framed Ruger revolvers, so please DO NOT try it from your Grandpa's Colt Single Action. It is however relatively mild in recoil and was just what I was looking for in a light-kicking hunting load for Peggi's carbine.
I had a limited number of test loads so I fired just three from each gun, over the sensors of my old Shooting Chrony Beta Max. From the rifle it averaged about 1205 fps; it did about 1050 from the 5 1/2" Ruger. Recoil is inconsequential from either gun. Penetration in water was 24" from both guns and the bullets turned into big, leaden toadstools at either velocity.
The glorious aspect of this is that I suspected this would shoot to the about same point of impact, in both guns, as they do with our two bulk .45 Colt loads. The XTP load did precisely that, zeroing at 50 yards in the fixed sight Ruger and requiring no sight adjustments to zero to 100 from the 16" lever action carbine.
Sometimes, things just fall together and this was one of those times. Life is good
Cooked up a hunting handload today for the wife's 92 Rossi Trapper and my Old Vaquero, both in 45 Long Colt.
This load is an adaptation of one of John Linebaugh's personal loads* using a 250 grain Hornady XTP over 13.0 grains of Hodgdons HS6 powder. This load is too heavy for anything except the big framed Ruger revolvers, so please DO NOT try it from your Grandpa's Colt Single Action. It is however relatively mild in recoil and was just what I was looking for in a light-kicking hunting load for Peggi's carbine.
I had a limited number of test loads so I fired just three from each gun, over the sensors of my old Shooting Chrony Beta Max. From the rifle it averaged about 1205 fps; it did about 1050 from the 5 1/2" Ruger. Recoil is inconsequential from either gun. Penetration in water was 24" from both guns and the bullets turned into big, leaden toadstools at either velocity.
The glorious aspect of this is that I suspected this would shoot to the about same point of impact, in both guns, as they do with our two bulk .45 Colt loads. The XTP load did precisely that, zeroing at 50 yards in the fixed sight Ruger and requiring no sight adjustments to zero to 100 from the 16" lever action carbine.
Sometimes, things just fall together and this was one of those times. Life is good