[gunnerjohn]

Hollis,
Funny you should mention the .338. This is one of my favorite hunting rifles. When I purchased the rifle, the main purpose of the gun was to take to Namibia last summer. With one year to get ready it was time to develop the load that I would use there. The rifle is a Remington 700 SS BDL that I have taken the luxury to modify to my needs. A Gentry quiet brake was the first add on. I wanted to have the quickest possible second shot and keeping the magnum down was needed. I ordered a H.S. Precision stock in three color desert with the longer grip and detachable magazine floorplate system. As with all H.S. products the stock and magazine system were top notch. The trigger was typical remington... built for liability policies. I revamped the trigger to a polite crisp hunting trigger. Normally I would have purchased a blued rifle, but the price of this rifle was too good to ignore and I had a solution. I do coatings with KG Guncoat and have the capacity to cook full length barreled actions, so I matched the metal to the pattern on the stock. After putting a Leupold 4.5-14 Longrange VX-III I matched it up with a back-up Leupold 3-9 compact.(You never know what is going to happen on a hunt of a lifetime and backups are needed)
Load development took about 2 months to find the sweet spot load for the rifle. I am a bit biased to Remingtons and have found them very accurate rifles with the stock barrel. These barrels may not cut it for match shooting but hunting accuracy can be achieved. I knew that I would be using the Barnes 225gr Triple Shock bullet for all of my game taking so the 5 shot string loads began. I used mainly federal brass for all the developing loads because I had a customer that shot factory federal premium only and never reloaded. After full length sizing, trimming length where needed, trimming flash holes and uniforming primer pockets, I started pouring powders into cases. Bullet seating of triple shocks generally works between .020" and .050" from the lands and grooves. Some rifles will not allow this due to magazine length so one would have to load to fit the box and deal with it. I headed to the range with 200 rounds of ammunition in 5 shot increments to determine what would work and what would not. You are reading this and asking yourself 200 rounds of 338 magnum...are you nuts. Ask my friends and they will explain my dedication to a project no matter what the pain may be.
At the range the shoot five, clean cool and analyze began. I found that the closer to the lands the bullet was worked better and that the hotter the loads bacame, the better the accuracy was. I finally settled on 2850fps out of the rifle. Oh... every shot of the 200 was shot though a chronograph to see what the consistency of velocity was. The final load was 72 grains of IMR 4350 with a Fed 215 Match primer with the bullet set .015 from the lands. I use the RCBS digital powder measure and scale and completely trust this system. The standard deviation of this load was 2.5 fps so I am happy with the set up. This load would consistently group five shots at .70" ctc at 100 yards and 1.1" at 200 yards. For a magnum hunting rifle shooting Barnes bullets this is great.
When I used the rifle in Namibia on plains game I killed 7 game animals in 7 days at distances from 60 to 360 yards. All of these animals never went more than 4 feet after being shot. I was able to recover a few of the Barnes triple shocks and found that I had 96-97% bullet weight retention with the "X" completely opened.
I hope this is what you were looking for in a load development write up. If you have any questions about working with big magnums and all copper bullets, feel free to ask.
John