Blackout - Berger Bullets

1 300 BlackoutLoads for aBolt RifleWhisper toBlackoutCharles E. PettySome years ago I spent sometime shooting with Jones Whisper wildcat. He tooka small cartridge the .221 Fireball blew it out to .30 caliber and,using heavy Bullets , turned it into anaccurate round that did some problem, of course, is that the Whisper cartridgesare wildcats, and while there s absolutely nothingwrong with them, the average shooter wants a gun andcartridge that he can buy off the shelf without resort-ing to custom guns and handloaded ammunition.

2 So,in 2011 the Whisper was reborn as Advanced Arma-ment Corporation s .300 AAC Blackout and introducedas a SAAMI standard cartridge by often is neither rhyme nor reason for the nam-ing of cartridges, and more than a few have asked howit came to be called Blackout . The last time that wordwas a common part of the vocabulary was duringWorld War II when cities turned off the lights to foilenemy .300 Whisper was originally found in single-shothandguns and AR-15 rifles, so it is not entirely surpris-ing that the Blackout appeared in a host of AR-15 typecarbines.

3 The rifle s semiautomatic action does placesome restrictions on what the cartridge has to do forthe rifle to function, so it was a very pleasant surpriseto learn that Remington was once using it in the Model700 LTR (Light Tactical Rifle), now though the rifle has a 16-inch barrel, the diameter at the muzzle would qualify as heavy to most, and when topped with a Meopta ZD 4-16xTactical scope I had on loan, the rifle weighed an toBlackoutFor comparison (left to right): .221 Remington Fireball, .300 AAC Blackoutand .223 pounds.

4 I quickly came to viewthat as a blessing in disguise, be-cause the combination of a smallcartridge and moderate weight re-sults in minimal recoil even withtop loads and heavy Bullets . Not tomention that the bolt action opensa whole new world of bullet choicesfor reloaders, because there is noworry about enough energy to workthe scope has adjustment clicksgraduated in the metric system cm at 100 meters, which con-verts to inch at 109 yards,which is between 1 4- and 1 8-minuteclick value. Practically speaking, it was not a problem, although itmight be a good idea to tape asmall conversion chart to the scopefor field to work with a specificcartridge during the current IceAge of ammunition and compo-Wheat topped by a plug of groups are shot firstwith factory loads as a basis forcomparison, but that wasn t possi-ble.

5 I was able to score one box ofRemington . 300 blackout ammuni-tion with a 220-grain bullet andhad some old Cor-Bon WhisperThe Remington .300 AAC Blackout was fitted with a Meopta 4x16 Tactical Remington s muzzle is threaded to accept a availability would have beenimpossible had I not already beena fan of the Whisper and had every-thingneeded to get started. My orig-inal Whisper ammunition was madefrom .221 Fireball brass, either byfireforming in the Whisper cham-ber or by using expanding dies. Fire-formingwas done in a Contenderbarrel using a charge of grainsof Bullseye and then filling thecase up to the neck with Cream ofHandloader toBlackoutammunition with 125-, 150- and220-grain Bullets , but they wereonly used for velocity loads then available fo-cused on either light or heavy Bullets , leaving quite a bit of unex-plored territory to the current shortage of com-ponents, Blackout shooters aremaking cases by cutting or.

6 223 Remington brass. Siz-ing can be done in standard diesand then the cases trimmed tolength and chamfered. A word ofwarning here: GI brass is almostalways heavier than the commer-cial stuff, and that means it has asmaller powder capacity. The oldadvice of reducing charges a bit isstill valid. My thought is that pub-lished starting loads will be fine,but work up slowly from the knowledge that the onlydifference between the Whisperand Blackout is the name, I wasable to round up quite a bit of load-ingdata with Internet of those were meant for AR-type rifles, and since I didn t haveto worry about making the gunfunction, I was free to use any.

7 30-caliber bullet and, since I had nodesire to set new speed records,was able to cautiously infer or de-duce loads for most of the weightsI wanted to development for the bolt-action rifle included Bullets from110 up to 220 grains and velocitiesfrom 2,400 fps down to less than900. The research was divided intosupersonic and subsonic loadswith the basic goal of finding thebest accuracy combinations foreach. Since some of my Blackout Supersonic Loads velocitybullet powder charge velocity spread accuracy(grains) (grains) (fps) (fps) (inches)

8 125 Nosler Ballistic Tip H-110 2,156 65 Lil Gun 1,846 46 Sierra Match H-110 2,136 43 Lil Gun 2,026 28 Nosler Ballistic Tip H-110 2,015 42 Lil Gun 1,955 32 Sierra Match H-110 1,995 33 Lil Gun 1,877 26 Sierra Match H-110 1.

9 788 56 Lil Gun 1,810 12 :All loads were shot with a Remington LTR rifle. Velocity readings are five-shot strings at 12 results are five-shot groups at 100 Alert Publisher cannot accept responsibility for errors in published load IOctober-November brass was a bit long in the tooth, it was trimmed to with an RCBS Trim Propower case I simply couldn t findenough factory ammunition to es-tablish any sort of baseline, thebest I could do was to look at cat-alog data and try to come closewith velocities.

10 I also dug up datafrom a long-ago Whisper story andstarted there, and once I got go-ing with some loads using lightbullets, I gradually expanded thesearch. Earlier work had used agood bit of H-110, and I found somemore recent data with Lil Gun. Thatturned out to be a great has taught me thatneck sizing is a good thing in boltguns, so I ordered a set of Reddingdies for both full-length and necksizing, and loading was done usingre-formed Fireball cases that werefired in the Remington and thenneck sized. Federal Match primerswere Remington s muzzle wasthought fully threaded, and I hap-pened to have a surpressor.