those are good enough choices

by bj , Friday, August 10, 2012, 20:18 (4489 days ago) @ Remington40x

When I started shooting there was a lot of writing in the magazines by Steve Herrett and Bob M??? (can't remember his last name). They were hunting antelope and such with 10" Contenders. I bought a 10" Contender barrel in .30H and used it in IHMSA competition. I also have experimented with a 10" in .357 Herrett.

Making .30H brass is not too hard and for hunting you don't need a lot of brass anyway, but it does take some effort to make and trim the brass. You can make the brass easy enough from .30-30 cases- run them through the size die, trim off a lot of length and fire-form them. I did a lot of load workup with 110 through 125 grain bullets and didn't have much success. I switched to 165 grain bullets for IHMSA and had good accuracy with them. Contenders can have different twists depending on age of the barrel and some don't do well with bullets over 165 grains. Later on I played with 135 grain "single shot pistol" bullets and had good accuracy with them. They weren't heavy enough for IHMSA though. In a scoped Contender this is a fairly mild cartridge to shoot.

.357H is very similar in terms of brass and reloading, but much different to shoot. For some reason the larger case and heavier bullets make this cartridge a real bear. It gives serious recoil and muzzle blast to the 10" Contender.

There are a lot of modern cartridges worthy of consideration that have come out since the days of the Herretts. Not that I have anything against the Herretts but a new buyer could consider everything that is available. Even .30-30 is worth consideration. Off the top of my head there is .300 Whisper and various JDJ cartridges, but .30-30 and the JDJ's work better in 14" barrels. Since the Contender has much less mechanism involved even a 12" or 14" barrel is not too unwieldy in the woods. I think a Contender with 12" barrel is about like carrying a 7.5" Superblackhawk. If I was doing it now I might be looking at a 7JDJ and 12" barrel.