Braved the cold --- put on the wool clothes, mukluks and headed to the range. It was 8 degrees this morning. I wanted to see what my velocities were in this extreme cold with different primers (with my pet deer load).
My base deer load is 32.0 grains of LeverEvolution powder. Note on a previous post that I said I was using Remington 7 1/2 primers. This was not correct and I edited my post. I was using Winchester small rifle primers.
Rifle is 25 DTI, 18 inch. Bullets were Sierra 100 grain BT loaded to 2.26 inches. During my load testing this was sub moa and velocity was 2830 FPS. The temperature at that time was 70 degrees to 80 degrees for the load development.
In contrast -- today is nearly 70 degrees colder than when I developed that load. I do use Quick Load and there is no reference to LeverEvolution in the most recent version. So I fudge with WW748. From 80 degrees to 8 degrees, WW748 loses 100+ fps. SOO --- I kinda figured I would lose something similar with the LeverEvolution.
Using the same bullet (Sierra 100 BT), Powder Charge (32.0 of LeverEvolution) and OAL (2.26), I fired the following:
Remington 7 1/2
1. 2656 fps
2. 2715 fps
3. 2688 fps
4. 2743 fps
5. 2650 fps
AV - 2690 fps
ES - 93 fps
SD - 39 fps
Group - 1" W x 1.25" H
Wolf Small Rifle Magnum
1. 2721 fps
2. 2760 fps
3. 2704 fps
4. 2732 fps
5. 2682 fps
AV - 2719 fps
ES - 78 fps
SD - 29 fps
Group - 1" W x 1.25" H
Winchester Small Rifle (4 shots only, ran out of bullets)
1. 2726 fps
2. 2732 fps
3. 2749 fps
4. 2732 fps
AV - 2734 fps
ES - 23 fps
SD - 9 fps
Group - 3/4" W x 3/4" H
As a side note --- I also shot some Remington Corelok 100 grain bullets. Velocities were about the same --- maybe a little higher, but I seated them to 2.23 inches (at the cannelure) so the pressures were most likely higher. However, group size was twice the size in comparison to the Sierras.