ANYONE LOAD 7MM STW . HAVE A GOOD LONG RANG LOAD, GOING COUES HUNTING LATER THIS YEAR NEED GOOD LOAD FOR 140GR BULLET.

I shoot it, love it.

I have some great 160grn loads I like but you are asking about 140's.

Unfortunately I'm in "start over" mode with respect to this caliber and 140 grn bullets. I tried very hard to get 140 grn XLC's to shoot when I should have abandoned them earlier. I loved the velocity I was getting but accuracy just wasnt as good as is needed for long distance shooting. I "blew" a ton of money on a great many bottles of powder, several boxes of XLCs before finally giving up on them. Accuracy was at best in the 2" range at 100 yards. To some I'm sure thats good but I knew better.

This past fall with 2 weeks to go before my elk hunt I threw in the XLC towel. I went down and bought a box of generic Remington ammo and would you believe the first 5 shots could be covered with a dime? I about fainted... but thus excited that the gun is indeed a shooter, and with time running out I tried a box of Rem Safari grade ammo and bingo, a 5 shot group at 100 yards was still within .75"! Good enough for me... I went out and single shot an elk at 380 yards the next week.

Now I'm back to square 1 with respect to 140s. While I dont have final numbers for 140 grn loads yet, I am getting really good groups with Sierra 140BTs and H1000... I'm exploring where the accuracy begins to fall off as velocity increases. Once I lockdown a good sierra load I'll switch over to Nosler Partitions and fine tune for those. Partitions are my favorite hunting bullet in many rifles and in retrospect I made a major error being so singleminded towards XLCs in the STW.

I'll tell you something interesting you can research for yourself. Up until around 2001 Hodgdon's 7STW load data was quite a bit hotter than what they currently publish. When they came out with manual #26 their loads really slowed down. I actually contacted them and asked "Why did your 7STW load data change when you used the same data for years? Had H1000 changed in some way I should be aware about?" They responded that absolutely no, the powder was the same and that other components had changed... when asked what specifically they wouldnt say. Perhaps they reduced loads across the board for legal reasons.

Barnes XLC loads are pretty crazy with how much powder they say is within the "safe" range... like 15% more than a max Nosler load. Older Hodgdon load data is similar.

I work up loads slow, look for pressure signs but I do use the pre #26 manual load data... it might be to your advantage to dig up some of that load data but be careful.

I wish I had firm answers to your question... its actually something I'm going to be doing this summer in fact when I get some free time. I'd love to share bench notes with you though as I'm always looking for something new and fun to try. I just wish I had the time and the money to try out all the new options available now... Groove bullets, Scirroccos etc etc.

I'm also soon to be looking for a 120grn STW loads as well.


-DallanC

I hav't found a good load yet. I am waiting on warm weather.I am going to try 7828 power. 79.5 puts it at 3300fps and 83 grs puts it at 3500 fps.

What rifle do you have? I have it in a lefthanded WinM70.


-DallanC

I shoot a BLASER R93 rifle. It's a switch barrel rifle from Gremany.
It has a 26" barrel and a 3.5x10 Leupold on it. This is a straight pull
rifle . Very accurate rifle, longest shot with my .300 wby barrel was 415
yds in Montana at a Mule Deer. Looking forward to the 7 mm stw I
heard it shoots very flat.



BLASERMAN

i have an STW and had some fits with it. can be very finicky. using a max load of retumbo and a 160 accubond i get consistent 1/2" groups. i did some 140 partitions used RL22 did well also.

This may be of some help.
7 STW loads

Bill

80 gr 7828 with 140 Nosler BT. 3500 fps. Ultimate Antelope load!