I finally got around to shooting my first tests in my Rem788 of the Ranch Dog 180grFNGC hunting bullet. My 4895 test ladder started with a much reduced charge as per the reduction formula for extruded powders, working up to the jacketed START load in five one-grain increments. I got a chance to shoot two 5shot groups of loads #1 & #2 off a sandbag @ 100yds. Load #1 gave me a 5" wide by 1" high spread and a nice tight 2.5" group. Load #2 gave me a 4shot of 4" and a 5shot 7" pattern. Maybe there is an accuracy node 1gr below my starting load. I will speculate further when I have shot loads #3-5 and see how they do. I hope for an accuracy node at a higher velocity, but it's up to the rifle, not me. We'll see. Other powders to test, too. That one group tells me the bullet has potential.
I have three other good .30cal hunting bullets too, but I wanted to try these .30Ranch Dogs first as I have been so pleased with the 190gr .35cal version in .357mag and .35rem Contenders. So far a .300Sav and several different .30-30's love them, they're proven deer and moose killers.
I've been wanting to try them in my .308, but first I had to shoot up 300rds of tests with target bullets already loaded, to free up the brass to try the RD's. I have a box of 50 empties I'll fill with 3031/RD tests, and after I shoot up the rest of these 4895's some 4064/RD's too. That will tell me if the rifle likes the bullet. If it does, I have four more powders to ask its opinion of with the same bullet to see just how accurate it can be. I'm really just looking for an accurate (2.5-3" 5shots @ 100yds) deer hunting load for the rifle. If I can get an accuracy node above 1700fps with one of the first few powders I try that would be nice too. I'd settle for 1400-1500 if I could get consistent groups under 3" with a load, but I'd choose one faster, 1800-2000 in a perfect world, or even 17-1800 that still stayed under 2MOA for a bit flatter trajectory if I could find an amenable powder.
I'd kinda like to find a cast hunting load as accurate as the rifle is capable, .5MOA with 150 & 165 Sierra GK's, though I might find the rifle chooses instead the 120gr soupcans, or the 150gr custom FNGC's, or the old standby 180gr 311041's, or the RCBS 180FNGC that my K31 loves. But its always nice to find a rifle's favorite bullet on the first or second try.
I tend to forget thirty years back when I spent two years of testing dozens of different 125-165gr jacketed hunting bullets after I first got this rifle and found out how accurate it is and found its favorite loads. Then I loaded up a couple thousand of them in brand new cases, (both 150 & 165 SGK bullet loads have a common POI between 100-150yds), some 165's but mostly 150's and a full box of nickel plated cases to carry while hunting.
But gathering dust in the corner I have a 20mm ammo can full of 50rd boxes of as-yet unfired tests loads of one kind of jacketed hunting bullet or another for the rifle, every time I finish another box of 50 I can reload them with more cast hunting bullets. Still haven't fired three 50rd 180gr JSP & JRNSP tests, loaded them twenty years ago, perhaps I should pull them, still have the partial boxes I loaded them with in the bullet stash. There are a bunch of other half remembered jacketed bullet tests in there too, just incompleted notes in the loading logs of the time and they don't make many of the bullets anymore. 1000rds or so I should pull that my collet puller would pull easily. I could better use the brass and have more fun with it, no need to neck size if I load cast in them, just need to expand the necks a tad. I guess I just thought myself up a lot more work.