73 wINCHESTER

[llc]

More or less found this site by accident while looking for information on my "New Rifle".  My first hunting rifle was a 73 Winchester in 32-30.  That was a little over 60 years ago.  I took my first deer with it, a blacktail buck shot near my grampa's house near Mill City Oregon.  Years have passed, I have a bunch of rifles of all sorts and just kept looking for a 73 that fit.  Finally found one. Shhots a nice round hole has a sonderful bore and is amazingly accurate even with the old eyes.  Its all original, bore is shiny but a bit bumpy.  The internal parts are all like new and the wood is sound and tight, bluing is mostly long gone and the serial number dates it to 1895 or 1896 so it is steel instead of iron.  I found this site by looking for loading data.  I have two of Grandad's loading books, an Ideal from 1944 and a Belding and Mull dated 1953.  I suspect they are the books we used to load Grampa's rifle.  I am fairly sure we did not know the rifle was "weak" and loaded it to the max but I certainly do not want to destroy my treasure.  Does anyone have some adequate loads for this rifle?  I am now using 115 grain bullets with 2.5gr of Trail Boss that produce about 950fps and have tried another load of 5.0gr Red Dot that produce 1150/1200 fps.  I will mostly be shooting paper but would like to have a "hunting" load to use on a local white tail.  I am amazed at the accuracy the rifle produces, 75 yard targets produce about 5" offhand groups but like I say, I do not want to hurt the rifle.  I have wandered through this site and notice that all you folks are quite friendly, I have seen nothing of the criticism and crap that most other rifle related sites seem to contain.  Keep up the good attitude..................llc

[rebsr52339]

Thanks IIc we try and keep it civil.   

[maldito gringo]

You might try the forum at Leverguns.com. Lots of levergun hunters -