44 Rem Mag take three. She's BACK!

For those of you who follow the blog, you will know I put a great deal of time into developing a self cast hand load for my Marlin 1894CB.  I simply love the trigger and wanted to use it over my 336CB in 30-30 which does not have as nice a trigger.  I tried two different moulds.  Two different powders and thought I had an acceptable solution as discussed in THIS post.

But, on June 3rd, 2012, I was shooting my new rifle with rounds produced per Junior Doughty's excellent "how to" make cast bullets perform at their maximum. After methodical benchrest like handloading techniques, (all cases trimmed to one length, primer pocket deburred, weight sorted brass, weight sorted bullets) I was getting scatter gun results. 10 Chickens, 6 Pigs, 2 Turkeys and 3 Rams for a whopping 21!  That was almost a year ago and I have not shot the 44 since or for that matter, even attend the last two matches of the CLA season.  This year, I dug out my 30-30 sight settings and shot it instead of the 44 and managed an improvement with 34 animals.  Was it me or the gun?

So, what happened to my 44?  I concluded the only variable to blame was that I had pounded in a blank in the rear dovetail.  My "used" gun came with no rear sight and I decided to make her look pretty.  I used my vernier to ensure I had the small side go in the wide side of the dovetail but it still took a great deal of force to beat in the blank.  Like an idiot, I kept beating on it until it "looked pretty".  Perhaps this blank introduced some barrel stresses?  There are some owners of the 44 who claim there is a tight spot where the barrel was stamped with Marlin et all.  Their point, there is not as much barrel wall relative to other calibers.  Today, I removed the blank, cleaned the barrel looking for a "tight spot" and concluded all was well.  I took some of those very same handloads to the range to test two things.  Accuracy of the gun @ 100y and the viability of a Redfield 75 which I will save for another post.

I started on chickens (50y) to get on paper.  I did in a fashion as the Redfield cannot come down as much as
I would like.  Once on paper and on the chicken, I went to the 100y benchrest.  I fashioned a crude "paper plate" from a hunk of white corrugated and stapled it on brown corrugated.  (I failed to bring a blank targets or spotting scope).  Put in 20 clicks of "up" and took 5 shots with just a front post insert to see if I was on paper.  (See "1" shots).  Fair but a little high.  Took out 5 clicks and moved it right 2.  Took another string of 5  resulting in the shots labeled "2" and WHOA!  My 44 is back to what it had been doing pre blank installation!  Please note, this 2.5" group was shot with iron sights off a rolled up jacket!  

Clearly the gun is capable and I need to get back on the 44 bandwagon.  But can I get enough loaded for Sunday?  Hope to see you at PEMI  this year, the link is current schedule and past results!