Range report warning long read. Now W/pics

[RBDMTJager]

First range report shooting first reloads and some Hornady factory ammo From my brand new CVA Cascade in flat dark earth Creosote and Vail camo synthetic stock
I topped it with a brand new out of the box Crimson Trace Ridgeline Pro 4-12x40mm Deplex reticle. Used medium height Warne horizontally split rings and factory scope bases provided with rifle. Cleaned all scope mounting screws and bases prior to install, used lock tight gel on all base screws, torqued all screws to factory recommended in-pounds.

I would like to offer as genuine and sincere of thanks to several members here who gave me advice that I used in setting up my reloaded rounds that undoubtedly made them much better than if I had just went wondering about UN-enlightened and ignorantly about on my own. I am thankful such great forums populated by equally great people exist more than willing to help the uneducated such as myself. I have no doubt what so ever this help cut my load development time and cost buy 90%.

First let me begin with admitting a mistake and a rather amateurish-greenhorn and quite embarrassing one at that. The night before this range session I got the brilliant idea to reduce the trigger pull on my new CVA Cascade from about 3.5lbs to <3lbs. I figured after all I had set the trigger pull on my Tikka T3 and my Savage FP10 both at between 2.5-2.75lbs and had no problems with them so did the same with my Cascade. Didn't let the fact my Lyman digital trigger scale was phicocked stop me and just made my decision to do this that much more stupid.

Yeah didn’t work out quite as well as I hoped. When I got to my private range I discovered we were down from our usual 20 or so shooting benches to only 11 and six were in use by other members. Of the few left for me to use they were the ones I knew had been undoubtedly designed to be used by our shorter club members especially children and younger pee-teens as I had tried to use them in the past and they forced me to scrunch down so low over my gun it made shooting my gun accurately form the bench quite problematic. Even using a 5 gallon bucket in the past didn’t get me low enough. But as I had no other choice I made the best of my situation. The shorter benches sounded great in theory but just didn’t work all that well so we thankfully made very few of them and most I thought had been moved into the indoor range for use in the indoor youth rim fire shooting events.

I quickly discovered I set my trigger pull so low that trying to shoot my gun hunched over in a severely awkward position (I now bore a striking resemblance to Quasimodo trying to shoot a rifle) resulted in my touching off a few shots sooner than I wished resulting in fliers.
After this situation resulted in fliers frist during scope sight in, then in the test control group I shot with Hornady factory ammo and lastly in the groups of my first two reloads, I decided to stop shooting and #1-take the barreled action out of my gun and adjust the trigger back up to >3# and figure a way to raise up my front rest and rear bag or call it a day.

Thankfully I found the materials needed to raise my rest and rear bag about 3” off the bench and combined with my Bald eagle front rest adjustment I was now able to shoot in relative comfort. I use a Bald Eagle windage adjustable front rest with a Protector rabbit ear rear bag as my rifle support system when shooting from the bench.

One other problem I had was once at the range found out SOMEHOW both my primary 9v battery and pack of two backup 9v batteries were missing from my Caldwell Ballistic precision chronograph rendering it useless. And no one at the range had one to loan/give me so chrono data of my loads will have to be for next time. Had to say this range day started out rather grim but ended up quite joyfully for me. Once I got home, I had an interesting conversation with my boys on how did my 9v batteries come up missing.

Now for my results.

Shot a total of five different reloads all of which had the fallowing components and specifications in common:
*Hodgdon Lil’Gun powder
*CCI 450 Large rifle magnum primers
*.452” 245 grain Hornady Interlock bullets
*Used Hornady Custom Grade Dies and shell holders
*New Starline brass
*Used Hornady LnL hand priming tool
*Full length resized with HCGD
*Used Hornady CG bullet seating die
*Minimum crimp using Lee FCD set per Lee directions
*Used PACT powder dispencer to get with in 1-2 grains of charge weight then trickled charge into pan on my RCBS 1010 BB scale to reach final powder charge weight.
Doubled checked first five powder charge weights with second 1010 scale then every fifth after that.
*Measured every loaded shell for COAL
*Test cycled every reload in rifle and a Lyman Chamber gauge.
*Did NOT bell the case mouths.
*Dipped base of bullets in Imperial dry neck lube to help with smoothing out bullet seating. Did a test seating and did notice slightly less force VS a non lubed bullet.

New brass preparation:
*FL resized all brass
*Cleaned Hornady case lube off brass with brake cleaner
*Did NOT bell case mouth
*Uniformed primer pocket
*De-burred flash hole
*Measured each piece of brass surprised all were W/In 0.003-0.0035” of each other and didn’t trim brass
*Primed with Hornady LnL hand primer
*Lightly champhered case mouth using VLD tool
*De-burred and polished inside and out case mouth with 0000 steel wool wrapped around brass chamber bush placed in battery drill on low speed.

Range conditions were near perfect.
East to west cross wind less than 5mph my wind flags barely moved all day. Temps in mid 70’s rifles chamber never allowed to get warm to the touch. Low humidity, mostly sunny.

Optic used was a brand new out of the factory box first time used Crimson Trace Brushline pro 4-12x40mm kept at 12x for all 100 yard shots.

SAFETY and LIABILITY disclaimer:
These loads are safe to USE IN MY GUN ONLY and not meant or recommended to be used in anyone else firearm if you choose to use any of them especially the ones over book max it is at your own risk.

Load No#-1
38.0 grains of Hodgdon Lil’Gun
CCI 450 rifle small magnum primer
.452” 245 grain Hornady Interlock
New never fired Starline brass
Set COAL to 2.2900-2.29005”

Results Reload No#-1
Load # 1 and factory loads were ones I fired before I adjusted and increased rifles trigger pull weight and modified height of front rest and rear bag. Discounting single flier, reload produced a 100 yard three shot group of essentially 1.1”
Brass showed no signs of high pressure force needed to lift bolt was normal.

Load No#-2
38.5 grains of Hodgdon Lil’Gun
CCI 450 rifle small magnum primer
.452” 245 grain Hornady Interlock
New never fired Starline brass
Set COAL to 2.900-2.9005

Results of reload #2
Reload #2 produced a very promising 3-shot 100 yard group of 0.595” again I observed no indications of high pressure in this loading.

Load #-3
39.0 Grains of hodgdon Lil’Gun
.452” 245 Hornady Interlock
CCI 450 magnum small rifle primer
New never fired Starline brass
Set COAL to 2.900-2.9005

Results of reload #3
Reload #3 produced my best 3-shot 100 yard group of the day at 0.497”. Again no pressure signs observed.

Load #-4
39.5 grains Hodgdon Lil’Gun
452” 245 Hornady Interlock
CCI 450 magnum small rifle primer
New never fired Starline brass
Set COAL to 2.900-2.9005

Results of reload #4
Reload #4 produced my third best and also very a good 3-shot 100 yard group at 0.648” Again no sighs of pressure were observed.

Load #-5
40 grains Hodgdon Lil’Gun
452” 245 Hornady Interlock
CCI 450 magnum small rifle primer
New never fired Starline brass
Set COAL to 2.900-2.9005

Results of load #5
Again very good results. First I shot a 3-shot 100 yard group of 0.542” and as by that time I had my shooting form down and was confident enough to try a five shot group so I sent the last two of load #5 down range and ended up with a 0.943” 5-shot 100 yard group.

Test group firing Hornady Custom Factory ammo
I am going to include a 5 shot 100 yard group I shot using Hornady Custom factory ammo shot prior to my fixing the issue with my trigger pull weight and issue with bench being to low. Over all not a bad group. I intended on using the Hornady ammo as a test group to see if my reloads would be better than factory and if better just how much. I also used the Hornady factory ammo to sight in the scope as I had kind of ran out of time and it was just simpler to buy one box of factory ammo than make 15-20 more reloads.

Horandy Custom ammo 100 yard test group.
Results:
Produced a 5-shot 1.22” 100 yard group of which two were fliers due to my issues with trigger pull weight and bench height. In all fairness a pretty darn good 100 yard group for factory ammo especially considering this is a shot range under 250 yard deer cartridge. This was my first group shot of this session purely for accuracy and only the first of three before I stopped and solved my issues with my trigger and bench height.

Final thoughts:
As I wrote this it dawned on me a rather important factor in this was the first time I shot a rifle from a bench for the purpose of evaluating a reload where the goal was maximum achievable accuracy since November of 2021 when I was shooting my Tikka T1X trying to find a good match grade 22lr ammo for competing in my rifle clubs 50 yard rim fire bench division, so my bench skills were unquestionably a little rusty and could very well had a negative affect on my accuracy results. Makes sense to me now why as the more I shot the better my groups got.
Thankfully my rifle shoots more than well enough to be a fine hunting tool. Also my reloads perform better than I hoped. I will make another batch of reloads using the 39.0, 39.5 and 40.0 charge weights of Lil’Gun and see which one performs best of all as they all produced so similar of accuracy it was likely my shooting skills or more appropriately stated a lack of MY shooting skills that made the difference in their accuracy.

One other thing quite startling and in my opinion amazing thing I noticed when measuring the groups of the five loadings I shot was they all were located within the same four squares that made up the same 2"x2" section of the all five targets and if I were to actually overlap all 17 shots they would form a group no larger than 2" center to center.
So over all I am beyond happy with my results.

I will do my best to post pictures of all groups but as this is my first attempt at posting pics here I hope I will have no issues.
Unfortunately I'm getting a message that my picture file is to big to up load will try other methods

[RBDMTJager]

Target for reload #1

[RBDMTJager]

Target reload #2

[RBDMTJager]

Reload load #4

[RBDMTJager]

Reload #3

[RBDMTJager]

Reload #5 picture

[Texas Sheepdawg]

Nice groups. Wonder what a chronograph would tell us? But hey…… killer groups right there. And it sounds like you’re getting similar performance to some of my bench tests. That 40.0 grains of Lil Gun is like a magic # for me.

[RBDMTJager]

100 yard Hornady Custom ammo with 250 grain FTX.
This was group I fired before I stopped and adjusted my trigger and raised my front and rear rests of the table. Two of the five rounds are fliers as a result of the to light of trigger pull and the very awkward bench shooting form. I stopped at five as I felt with the issues I was having I was essentlually waiting ammo.
I incorrectly labeled it a four shot group and I do not know why as it's clearly a five shot group.
Still all in all not an awful group.

[RBDMTJager]

Nice groups. Wonder what a chronograph would tell us? But hey…… killer groups right there. And it sounds like you’re getting similar performance to some of my bench tests. That 40.0 grains of Lil Gun is like a magic # for me.

Yep definitely bringing the chronograph next trip