Handloading for NRL Hunter

I have a dream. It is a powerful motivator. I want to walk the prize table at an NRL Hunter match. No, not because of the fantastic prizes that await the shooters. I want to compete in a match that makes me a better hunter and pushes me beyond my limits. That’s what an NRL Hunter match is to me. You may think it’s a huge mistake for someone past 60 and partially disabled, but the lust to ring steel out to 1,000 yards is a siren song.

For the neophytes, NRL Hunter is one of the fastest-growing shooting sports in the United States. Competitors have four minutes to set up, locate the animal targets and engage. Generally, targets are found between 400 and 700 yards, but in some cases, they can be as far as 1,000 yards. It is as close to a hunting simulation as a competitor can get (NRLHunter.org/rules).

As a handloader, my options are dictated by the required power factor. A competitor’s loads must meet a power factor of 380,000, which is calculated by multiplying the bullet weight by the muzzle velocity. In its most basic form, the shooter must use a cartridge powerful enough to achieve power factor while keeping the recoil low enough to keep a good sight picture to see impacts. On the flip side, a shooter must develop a precision mindset. Protocol demands that each case, bullet, powder and primer come from the same manufacturer, same lot and be loaded the same every time. Many competitors go so far as to buy enough cases, bullets, powder and primers from the same lot to last the life of the barrel. Depending on the cartridge, that may be as few as 1,500 or as many as 5,000 shots.

Most competitors prefer heavy for caliber, long, scant ogive bullets with a high ballistic coefficient. More critical than bullet drop is wind drift. Even the greenest shooter can use range finders and ballistic apps to hit the target on calm days. Once the wind starts blowing, experience and proper bullet selection are the difference between a miss and the ring of a steel target. Berger and Hornady are the leaders in the field of match bullets, but Sierra and Nosler are also found in the winner’s circle. 

NRL Hunter matches are held around the country and in all seasons. The temperature can range from finger-numbing cold to headache-inducing heat. Many smokeless powders change their burn characteristics with temperature, some dangerously so. Hodgdon offers a complete line of Extreme powders with a low temperature coefficient, meaning that a wide temperature swing has little impact on burn characteristics. In the end, the powder should fill the case to provide the most consistent ignition.

Finding cases can be frustrating, but manufacturers are catching up with demand. I used to buy whatever I could find, but after bad experiences with soft primer pockets, I became more demanding. Since then, I limit myself to ADG, Peterson and Lapua. They take extra steps to harden the case base, which reduces primer pocket stretching. 

I have been handloading for decades, but each time I ask top competitors what they do, I learn something new. I have queried many shooters, including NRL champion and ambassador Rusty Ulmer. The following are the steps most follow, although some do them in a different order. Some add more steps, thinking it may not help, but it can’t hurt. Some steps that were important in decades past, such as weighing cases, de-burring primer holes, and uniforming primer pockets, have fallen out of favor, as most shooters don’t feel the juice is worth the squeeze.

Chamfer the Case Mouth: This is for new brass and cases that have been trimmed.

De-prime: I use Lee’s universal de-priming die to eject the spent primer. The die does nothing else, and no contact is made with the actual case. I do this first so that the primer pockets are exposed for cleaning.

Clean: Sizing dies can be damaged by dirt on used brass. Grit can become embedded in the die surface, causing scoring on each case, shortening its life, or destroying it outright. When I first started cleaning my brass, I used an inexpensive vibratory cleaner filled with Lyman-treated cob grit. It was a noisy, dusty job, and afterwards there was the task of clearing the cob grit from the primer flash holes. A few years ago, I decided to go to a water-and-stainless-steel pin cleaning. The brass looked fantastic, so I donated my vibratory hopper and cob grit to a local shooting club. I was in ignorant bliss.

A few weeks ago, another precision handloader warned me that the stainless steel pins might be peening a lip on the case necks. My smile vanished as I pulled case after case and ran a small screwdriver over the lip. Every one of them indeed had a lip! I am now back to vibratory cleaning with cob grit.

Anneal: Forty years ago, annealing wasn’t listed in any reloading manual; now it is one of the most essential steps in maintaining brass life and precision. As brass cases are used over and over, the brass work hardens, the neck tension changes and eventually cracks. Imagine bending a piece of sheet metal back and forth until it cracks. That’s work hardening. Some shooters anneal their cases after a predetermined number of firings based on their experience. Other shooters anneal after each firing. By not annealing after each use, I have no way to determine how much each piece of brass has changed in hardness and neck tension. If I anneal each time, I know the brass hardness has been reset to zero, and is essentially a new case. To ease my anxiety, I anneal after each firing.

There are two types of annealers, gas and electrical induction. Gas annealers use a propane or manufactured gas cylinder and a torch tip. In most cases, the process is automated with a drum that passes the case in front of the flame, pausing briefly to heat the neck and shoulder. Admittedly, when I first started, I chucked a deep-well socket into a battery drill. The socket was deep enough to hold the case. By keeping the case in front of the flame, it would turn until it started to glow, then it was dumped into quenching water. (Unlike steel, brass doesn’t harden again when quenched.)

As my budget allowed, I upgraded to an AGS annealer. The process is basically the same, but the timing and temperature remain the same for each case. Other brands do the same thing in a slightly different way. 

For those with a larger budget, there are induction annealers. The brass case is briefly inserted into an induction coil. The induction coil induces heat into the case, annealing it. The process is exact. AMP Annealing, or Annealing Made Perfect, is the leader in this type of annealer.

Lubricate: Most competitors I spoke with use Hornady One-Shot Gun Cleaner and Lube. Some prefer Imperial sizing wax. Rusty makes his own spray lube by mixing lanolin oil with 99% alcohol at a 1:15 ratio.

Full-Length Sizing: Every competitive shooter I know bumps the shoulder back 0.002  to 0.003 inch while full-length sizing. I remove the neck-sizing ball from the die and neck-size later. If the primer wasn’t removed previously, it is now.

Neck Sizing: Some prefer outside sizers, others prefer inside mandrels. I like an inside neck mandrel 0.001 to 0.002 inch smaller than the bullet I’m using. For years, I didn’t use lubrication, but then I spoke with another shooter who claimed he saw a change in the shoulder bump when not using lubrication. After sighing heavily, I decided to check myself. I found a change of 0.0005 to 0.0015 inch difference when not lubricated, and I could feel the resistance through the press lever! I found no change in the shoulder bump after lubricating the neck. Case closed.

Check Case Length: If cases are close to or exceed the maximum overall length, trim the lot and chamfer again.

Clean the Brass: Case lube can attract dirt and impair the cartridge’s grip on the chamber walls, leading to false signs of over-pressurization.

Prime: Many shooters want their primers 0.003 to 0.005 inch below the case head. Some shooters prefer standard primers while others spend extra for match-grade primers.

Weigh the Powder: Some experienced shooters forgo weighing every charge and use an old-school volume powder thrower. They adjust the thrower until an average of ten throws gives them the weight they want, then lock it down and get to work. They do check the thrower periodically to ensure it’s still on point.

Most electronic powder dispensers are accurate down to 0.1 grains, plus or minus 0.1 grains. The next step up in accuracy is the RCBS MatchMaster. It is precise down to 0.01 grains. The more consistent the powder weight is, the tighter the standard deviation, and the less vertical stringing will occur. 

Bullet Seating: Choosing the correct seating stem can make a world of difference. I was in a run of seating bullets, and I kept feeling the bullet stick. I didn’t see anything wrong, but when I checked the

base-to-ogive measurements, they were all over the place. I suspected the bullet nose was at just the right angle to jam into the seating stem as it does into rifling. Luckily, I had a selection of Hornady stems for VLD bullets that worked in this brand of die as well. With a simple change, the sticking stopped and seating became consistent.

I know top shooters who try various seating depths until they find the best grouping. I know others who seat the bullet 0.030 to 0.050 inch off the lands and don’t go any further. Regardless, they all win matches, so you need to decide which method provides the most confidence for this game. What ultimately dictated the overall cartridge length (OAL) was the magazine. I made dozens of test loads with the long-ogive bullets, only to find they wouldn’t fit in the magazine until I seated the bullet farther in. Lesson learned. Remember, don’t kiss the lands with the bullet because as fouling builds, chamber pressures will rise and start vertical stringing or worse. 

My testing included multiple bullet and powder combinations to find an accurate load that exceeded power factor by a safe margin while minimizing recoil. That’s a tall order. It was always in the back of my mind that my testing was done at 4,900 feet in elevation, which skewed my velocity higher than it would be at a lower elevation, so I made sure my final loads were a safe margin above power factor.

The bullets used included: Berger 135-grain Classic Hunter, Berger 140-grain Elite Hunter, Hornady 140-grain ELD-M, Hornady 147-grain ELD-M, Sierra 150-grain Matchking, Hornady 153-grain A-Tip and the Berger 156-grain Elite Hunter.

The powders tested were: Winchester’s StaBALL 6.5 and 760, Hodgdon’s Varget, Superformance, H-4350 and H-4831, Ramshot’s Hunter and Vihtavuori’s N555 and N565.

Cases included Peterson and Lapua. Both are excellent cases. CCI BR2 large rifle primers were used in cases that used the standard large rifle primers. Remington 71⁄2 benchrest small rifle powders were used in the Peterson SRP cases. 

You may wonder why some riflecases are offered with small rifleprimer pockets when they traditionally used large rifle primers. For the last few years, I thought it was because of the large rifle primer drought. But when I started digging into it, I found that the small rifle primer cases had been around long before COVID decimated our supply chain. One reason is that since the primer pocket is smaller, the case head is stronger. Some shooters claim to get 20 loadings! Another reason is that the small rifle primer has less brisance, thus the powder ignition is less violent. Some long-distance black powder cartridge shooters swage their primer pockets to accept small pistol primers or place a wafer of cigarette paper between the flash hole and the black powder for this very reason.

As I ran the tests, firing about 450 shots, some powders proved unsuitable for various reasons. It became clear that bullets in the 150 class were the best fit for achieving power factor, reducing wind drift and improving accuracy.

As I delved deeper into testing, I found that Hodgdon H-4350 consistently gave me the best results. It, paired with the Hornady 147-grain ELD-M bullet, worked the best in my rifle.

In the end, you need to find what works best for you and what builds confidence at the match, and someday you may be walking the prize table.