Hey all! New guy here, been a light reloader for about 15 years with 7RM, 40S&W, and 44mag, and now 7mm-08. I picked up a cheap Savage Axis in 7/08 last spring then could not find any brass. So I ordered 2 boxes of factory Hornady whitetail 139g SPs and found out the gun hated them: best I could do was 4" at 50 yds (at least I got some brass out of the deal) and one of the 40 rounds split a neck on the first shooting, thought it might be a fluke. Then I worked up a coupla different loads using that brass. The best one was 40.0g IMR 4064 under Hornady 162 BTSP 2.810" OAL that yielded a 4 shot bug hole at 100yds. That load flowed brass into the ejector even though it was not quite max load per Lymans 49th. I backed off to 38.5g for 10 hunting rounds and they did the trick for now but projectile still threw the jacket on impact. Is this brass just that soft? Do I need to trash it? Could this be something different going on here? Sorry no Chrony. Barrel is 22" 1:9.5" twist.
Any thoughts would be appreciated!
Any thoughts would be appreciated!