Long range 357 magnum - bullet weight?

[ZaksGod]

just for a comparison in my little .357 1894 marlin with 4.8gr of bullseye,fiocchi primers,158gr hard cast hannam rnfp i get approx 1156 fps.that is the max load in my book.so with your longer barrel and my powder your velocity should be a fair bit higher

[dodgyrog]

Somewhat amused by this as Elmer Keith was driving 44 Magnum 240gr boolits to 400 yards with accuracy out of a 4" revolver. Getting a .357 mag to shoot at 100 yards should be a walk in the park!
Personally I would use a heavy round nose around 170gr (I have a lovely 6 cavity Hensley and Gibbs mould) driven by a healthy load of Alliant blue dot or Viht equivalent (340 I believe). Good shooting.

[tacfoley]

I've shot .357Mag at 300m with great lack of success - undoubtedly you'll do better than I did shooting your Low Wall and its lovely long barrel by comparison with my 8.375" S&W. Loads in that for 300m were not comfortable in a handgun, but would be just fine for a rifle.

Since I'm not in the business of posting reloading data here based on my own experience, I'll let you look up the details, but I WAS shooting a 170gr gas-checked hard cast rather than a FMJ - see post #13.

Lead seemed to work better on steel than FMJs - maybe its was an illusion, who knows?

tac

[airgunnut]

Somewhat amused by this as Elmer Keith was driving 44 Magnum 240gr boolits to 400 yards with accuracy out of a 4" revolver. Getting a .357 mag to shoot at 100 yards should be a walk in the park!
Personally I would use a heavy round nose around 170gr (I have a lovely 6 cavity Hensley and Gibbs mould) driven by a healthy load of Alliant blue dot or Viht equivalent (340 I believe). Good shooting.

Well, Elmer Keith did load his pistols up to the hilt, he developed a number of rounds, countless loads and quite a few bullet head (bootlits or whatever you want to call them) shapes, he also developed the "reclined" pistol shooting position, sat down leaning back on to a solid post or some thing and resting the pistol on his knee, not to mention his "this isn't going to beat me" attitude (for those not for familiar with Elmer Keith, try to get hold of his autobiography, Hell I was there)

[DesG]

I did a lot of .357 long range shooting back in the day with a six inch barrel ruger with mixed results. I entered the Phoenix shoot for underlevers this year with my Marlin 1894c. At 100 yards it's suprissingly accurate but it becomes quite vague as the range gets up to 300. It is still a pistol bullet with the aerodynamics of a brick, and the speed drops off very quickly. Drag is an inverse square law so doubling the initial speed quadruples the drag. You only have to compare a HV rifle bullet to a 38 swc to see why long range shooting is very much a rifle thing. Another thing to remember is that it's the BASE of the projectile which causes the most drag with a huge vacuum forming behind the bullet in flight pulling it back.

Not to say I wont have another go at the Phoenix this year though!