i love her

 

      AFD

 

( & i cannot get a good grouping as yet with my reloading the 303)

 

I still love her !

 

(Any other rifle would have gone by the by ..by now !!)

 

I've not had much luck with the Winchester .303 ammo in Enfields that showed much if any wear to the bore, and accuracy was very poor when used with a two groove bore, but my No.1 MkIII has an excellent bore with no sign of throat erosion and slugged at .311 which is uncommonly tight for a military .303 bore. The previous owner used 180 Gr Winchester almost exclusively and got very good results, very tight grouping on the horizontal plane with some vertical stringing likely a matter of bedding.

To be fair the Winchester ammo I'd tried with my earlier LE and a few belonging to friends showed signs of having been either a defective lot or having been poorly stored, there were a number of cases that split lengthwise by as much as 1/2 inch , though the chambers of those rifles were not at all worn or loose and had no much problem with any of a dozen or so other brands both commercial and military. One of the split cases seemed to be paper thin on the side that split. Examination of the fired cases given to me by the previous owner of the No.1 showed no visible defects and very little sign of stretching and no annular ring, I'll know more when I reload those. Winchester cases don't have a good rep when it comes to reloading due to a thinner than optimum rim.

 

It seems like many hunters interested in the Moose want to use heavier bullets of 200 gr and up, considering the weight of the larger specimens it sounds like a heavy bullet is called for, but I wonder if using a heavy bullet with necessary lower velocity might result in a case of dimishing return.

 

I ran across a partial box of 215 gr bullets when I first started handloading the .303, not enough of them to do any real load development. I wonder if the tighter throat of the SMLE and later Enfields compared to the LE throated for the MkVI bullet could cause any pressure increase. Depends mainly on the profile of the bullet nose I suppose. 

Pre WW1 tests comparing the MkVI bullet to the MkVII showed that the MkVI had much better penetration in softer materials like earth and sand bags, the opposite being the case for harder materials such as wood. Of course the MkVI was a non expanding FMJ  and the MkVII was designed to tumble in flesh so those results are not directly relevant when soft point bullets are used.

 

 

No Moose in this region, and our Black Bear are seldom very large compared to those further north, so 150 to 180 bullets handle the biggest of local game.

Only time a really heavy gun comes in handy here is when one of the Elephants at the breeding facility decides to go for a stroll. Theres a Bengal Tiger breeding facility there as well, some big boys there for sure, hate to see what would happen if they got loose. The .303 has taken many a tiger no doubt.