I was looking for a box of oddball ammo that a friend was interested in and I was digging through a 20mm ammo can of various jacketed ammo trying to find it. No luck, but way down at the bottom I found something strange. It was an old green mtm 50rd box with just a tiny label that said "8x57 tests/4064". It's my handwriting. No clue, so I open it. Inside I find a little slip of paper with the charge data for three incremental tests, thirty loaded rounds of Sierra 150's and twenty empties. There is no lot number and no date on this test and I have no memory of loading them because I started keeping track of every round I loaded and notes on my tests sometime in the mid-80's. So as far as I can figure I loaded them about forty years ago and was happy enough at the time with my now-standard loading that I never bothered to shoot them. Note: my GoTo jacketed 8x57 load uses a mild charge of 3031 under a 150gr Sierra PH at somewhere around 23-2400fps and is good for just under 2MOA. I have no records of the tests and workups, just the load data that I have been using ever since in both my own and my bro's sporterized Mausers.
So, yesterday I brought them to the range and shot some groups with two of the three loads. One of them gave me a pair of 5rd 100yd groups of less than 3". Next time I will shoot the third and see if load #3 tightens up some more. If nothing else it gives me fifty more cases to load up with the cast bullets I shoot in the old girl, but if it works I might have had a decent load sitting undiscovered in the ammo stash for all these years at a good bit more velocity, not that I need it but hey it never hurts. Never did find the oddball rounds I was looking for. Go figure. But you know, every time I shoot this 99 year old lady I fall in love with her all over again.