Leverevolturion, and Hodgdon says its no good!!

[Nimrod]

So up untill today I have never shot at targets past 300 yards due to range limits, however I found an old abandoned bush plane runway near where I live and I am now able to shoot 500 yards which I did today with what I think are respectable results. Sorry for the picture quality. I had zero wind an was shooting at 3" circles though in the pics you will see 1" circles I put next to the groups for a size representation. I was shooting three different bullets all pushed by the same charge of LVR, and I have to say Hodgdon is missing the bus on this powder! Most of my groups would have fit inside a clay pigeon.

loads

All used CCI #41 primers and Hornady casings.

120 grn Nosler Ballistic Tip
LVR - 31.8 grns
Seated to 2.722 measured at the ogive.
OAL - 2.250
2525 FPS

123 grn Amax
LVR - 31.8 grns
Seated to 2.705 measured at the ogive.
OAL - 2.279
2548 FPS

123 grn SST
LVR - 31.8 grns
Seated to 2.7 measured at the ogive.
OAL - 2.267
2543 FPS

300 yards
image.jpg

400 yards
image.jpg

Amax at 400
image.jpg

Ballistic tip at 400
image.jpg

SST at 400
image.jpg

Amax at 500
image.jpg

Ballistic tip at 500


All three at 500

As you can see with the far right group the SST's started to spread out at 500, but I didn't wait for the barrel to cool after the Ballistic Tips so that coulda been it also.

The SST was the worst performer for me but still acceptably I think for a hunting round. My rifle is a .264 LBC and has a 20" barrel. The thing I was excited about is the fact that all three bullets are shot with the same load and have pretty close to the same point of impact. I am thinking that the ballistic coefficient of the Ballistic Tips are a lot closer to the Amax then what the specs say based on what I am seeing in actual life. Hopefully this post is okay as I only have a smart phone to work with. I am curious what experienced long range shooters have to say about these groups because as I said before shooting targets at these ranges is new to me.

[nincomp]

As I mentioned in another thread, Leverevolution is a blend of powders specifically tailored to get more velocity out of the old 30-30. Although VR can work well in some other cartridges (338 Federal, for example), its particular blend of powders can give screwy results in others. For this reason, I suspect that Hodgdon has not tested leverevolution powder across all of cartridge variations on their reloading list.

[Drifter]

Nice work Nimrod.

As you can see with the far right group the SST's started to spread out at 500, but I didn't wait for the barrel to cool after the Ballistic Tips so that coulda been it also.

FWIW- In my experience, it can take 1 to 3 shots for accuracy of a particular bullet to settle in after shooting a different bullet. For example, the SST group immediately following the BT's might not be representative of the true potential of the SST's.

[Nimrod]

Roger that, I never even considered that. I will try sticking with one type at a time instead of swapping back and forth. Thanks for the input.

[bwaites]

This is an old story, but shooting ANYTHING after you shoot Nosler BT's is asking for bad data.

MANY of the old forum members noted this, as has Bill Alexander it other posts. We found that you could shoot the BT's after other bullets and get a fairly good representation, but reversing that process caused big headaches.

NOTHING seems to shoot well behind BT's. We never identified if it was the specific copper formulation or what, but the only way to get back to a good zero was clean the barrel and start over.

[Nimrod]

Great info, what do you more experienced fellas think of the other loads grouping? Seemed pretty fair to me, but have never shot groups out that far before and I don't know the formula for measuring group size.

[Drifter]

Moa or better groups (~1" @ 100 yards, ~2" @ 200, ~3" @ 300, etc) should be considered good. As distance increases, this gets more difficult, as more factors (such as wind) become more influential.