Long Range Handgun Hunting with the 6.5 JDJ

Long Range Handgun Hunting with the 6.5 JDJ

The loads mentioned in this article are safe in my particular handgun, but should not be used without first reducing the load in your handgun, and working up to maximum loads.  Check your loading data against a reliable source before attempting to work up a load.

            My introduction to handgun hunting in the mid-1980s was, well, let’s just say, substantially less than mediocre.  I was a graduate student living in Memphis making around $10,000 a year with a new wife, and a brand new baby daughter.  There was not a lot of extra money (diapers and formula were expensive), and sometimes those end-of-the-month meals were really creative.

            I knew what I wanted, but what I wanted and what I could afford were two entirely different things.  I finally found a great deal on a Thompson/Center (T/C) Contender with two barrels: a 7mm T/CU and a .223 Remington, both in 14-inch configurations.  Based on bullet weight selections, the then current game laws in Tennessee, and my love affair with all things 7mm, I decided that the 7mm T/CU would be (just) adequate for taking deer sized game.

            In the 1980s, Memphis had a fantastic public shooting range located near the city garbage dump, and I was there every available weekend working up loads.  As I could not afford a chronograph in those days, I relied on group sizes and published velocities.  I was concerned about terminal performance, so I selected the (then) new Sierra 130 Gr. single shot pistol bullet.  These bullets, which are no longer available, were purported to expand at velocities lower than would be expected from a rifle length barrel.  My pet load was 26.0 Gr. of H4895, which sent a 130 Gr. bullet out of the barrel at a leisurely 2000 FPS.  At 100 yards, this would yield 909 ft-lbs of energy at 1775 FPS, which should be marginally adequate to dispatch a whitetail deer.  I will say, however, that the load produced one ragged hole on many a three-shot group at 100 yards.

In 1988, my hunting buddy borrowed my Contender and managed to put that theory to the test on a nice tall 6-point in Middle Tennessee.  He was set up beside a small pond, which had been the watering hole for several nice deer throughout the season.  The single shot hit the buck behind the shoulder, and he immediately leapt into the air and landed in the pond.  After we fished him out, a necropsy revealed that the bullet had passed up and over the deer just under the hide, and that the deer had actually drowned.  The performance of the bullet was poor.  My buddy looked at me and summed it up, “Well that’s not good.”  I made a decision on that day that I would not shoot another deer with the 7mm T/CU.  (However, groundhogs were never safe when the 7 mm T/CU was in my possession).

            Over the intervening years, a career and family seriously impacted my handgun hunting, and when I did have a chance to hunt, I used my trusty Ruger Redhawk in .44 Remington Magnum.  However, my interest in single shot pistol hunting never faded.  

.225 Winchester

6.5 JDJ

Last year, Dan Zelenka, President of the Louisiana Shooting Association (LSA), suggested that I borrow his 6.5 JDJ barrel for the T/C Contender.  The 6.5 JDJ started life as a wildcat creation by famed pistol hunter, J.D. Jones.  Jones took the venerable .225 Winchester, expanded the neck to .264”, and steepened the neck from 25° to 40°.  After a lot of research, I realized that I had finally found the perfect single shot pistol caliber for hunting deer and pigs, so I had SSK Industries send me my own barrel.

From left to right, the .225 Winchester case serves as the parent for the 6.5 JDJ shown to its right.  A 6.5 JDJ loaded to an OAL of 2.900" with a 120 Gr. Nosler Ballistic Tip.  A .243 Winchester round is included for comparison.

From left to right, the .225 Winchester case serves as the parent for the 6.5 JDJ shown to its right.  A 6.5 JDJ loaded to an OAL of 2.900" with a 120 Gr. Nosler Ballistic Tip.  A .243 Winchester round is included for comparison.

          Reinventing the wheel has never been my favorite pastime, so with a bit of research I found that most hunters recommend the 120 Gr. Nosler Ballistic Tip (BT) for this cartridge.  But, before I could begin reloading, I had to form the wildcat cases.  I purchased 100 brand new .225 Winchester cases, and sized them using my custom Hornady dies.  Although the dies are able to get virgin .225 Winchester cases close to final dimensions, like many wildcat cartridges, one has to fire-form them to get them to the final dimensions.  Jones recommends using heavier bullets over a reduced load for this process.  I used 31.0 Gr. of Varget under a 140 Gr. Speer JSP bullet. A quick trip to the range resulted in 100 newly fire-formed 6.5 JDJ cases. 

Dan and Jones both recommend putting the 120 Gr. Nosler BT over 38.0 to 38.5 Gr. of IMR4350.  This has been Dan’s go-to load for hunting for many years, and has cost many a game animal its life.  Dan has used it for hunting in North America and Africa.  Accuracy from Dan’s barrel with this load was great, but from my barrel, was poor.  As Dan succinctly reported, it shot “minute of washtub” from my barrel.  Although a slight exaggeration, 100-yard groups from my barrel averaged 1.9”, whereas this same load turned in averages of less than 1” from Dan’s barrel.  Of note, Dan’s barrel has a 1-9” twist barrel, whereas my barrel has a 1-8” twist.  My plans were to use this pistol in September to hunt pronghorn antelope in Wyoming, where 300 yard shots are not atypical.  Clearly, 2 minutes-of-angle (MOA) would not be accurate enough for this purpose.

From my previous experience, the BT is deadly.  This proved to be true when I took a small buck during the 2010 Louisiana hunting season at 71 yards with a single shot to the neck (the only clear target available).  The BT created tremendous shock and damage to the neck and he fell without taking a step.  The BT fragmented and shed a lot of its jacket through the wound channel, exiting on the far side.  Likewise, I have found that the 120 Gr. BT from my pistol expands violently on prairie dogs, doing tremendous damage to these small critters.  But, although the bullet is deadly, my pistol just didn’t seem to like them.

Given my concerns over the accuracy of the BT out of my barrel, and my infatuation with the new Barnes Tipped Triple Shock (TTSX) bullet, I decided to work up a load using the 120 Gr. TTSX bullet over Hodgdon Varget.  J.D. Jones warns against the use of Barnes X-bullets in the Contender because of the long bearing surface on these solid copper bullets and the excessive pressures that can be generated.  The original Barnes X-bullets were much longer than their cousins of the same weight, given to the solid cooper design and the subsequent lack of a lead core.  Bullets of similar design, such as the Sirocco, were reported to have caused high pressures and excessive fouling resulting in unacceptable accuracy.  I, likewise, found this to be true in my experiments with the original Sirocco bullet design.

            Barnes took this into consideration when they created the new TSX and TTSX bullets, and placed multiple circumferential grooves in the bullet to reduce bearing surface.  At first glance, one may confuse these grooves as cannelures (often misspelled as "cannalures"), but they are not.  However, blowing up a pistol, much less MY pistol has never been a desire of mine, so I heeded J.D. Jones’ warnings and approached load development carefully.  Mr. Jones recommends that bullets be seated at least .050 inches from the lands and that powder charges be reduced accordingly.

            Using a full-length resized case without a primer or powder, I inserted a 120 Gr. TTSX into the case and inserted this into the bore of my Contender.  I repeatedly closed the chamber until the bullet was seated in the case deep enough to allow the Contender to securely latch.  After I removed the case from the bore, I measured the case length and determined that the throat of my Contender with this particular bullet seated against the lands was 2.9505 inches.  Subtracting the minimum bullet jump of .05 inches from this, resulted in a maximum cartridge overall length O.A.L.) of 2.9005.  Just to be safe, I adjusted my dies to seat the bullets to an easy to remember O.A.L. of 2.9000.  Keep in mind that your handgun will have a different throat length and you cannot skip this step of determining the maximum safe O.A.L for your particular handgun.
 

            J.D. Jones recommends reducing powder charges by at least 10%, so again, just to be safe, I reduced charges by 15%.  The maximum load of Varget recommended by SSK for the 120 Gr. Nosler BT is 34.0 Gr.  Using this as my upper limit, I began loading 85% of 34.0 Gr., or 29.0 Gr.  To make a very long story a little bit shorter, I discovered 

The four bullets used for load design are (from L to R), 120 Gr. Nosler Ballistic Tip, 120 Gr. Barnes TTSX, 125 Gr. Nosler Partition, and 130 Gr. Berger Hunting VLD.

that 33.8 Gr. of Varget behind a Barnes 120 Gr. TTSX bullet is safe in my pistol.  Bolstered by this finding, I worked up a load with Reloader 15, which has a similar burn rate as Varget.  I found that 33.5 Gr. of Reloader 15 behind this same bullet was both safe and extremely accurate.
 

Bullet Powder Charge Weight (Gr.) Average Group Size (in) Muzzle Velocity (FPS) Remaining Velocity at 100 yds (FPS) Energy at 100 yds (ft-lbs) 120 Gr. Nosler BT IMR4350 38.5 1.92 2347±17 2166 1250 AA2520 33.5 0.63 2463±14 2276 1380 AA2230 33.0 1.61 2456±11 2276 1380 AA2495 34.0 1.44 2400* 2216 1309 Varget 34.0 1.51 2460* 2273 1377 RL15 35.0 1.92 2400* 2216 1309 N550 37.0 1.61 2431±9 2245 1343 N160 38.0 2.24 2300±9 2120 1198 120 Gr. Barnes TTSX RL15 33.5 0.91 2300* 2115 1192 Varget 33.8 1.29 2376±21 2187 1275 125 Gr. Nosler Part IMR4320 33.0 1.88 2410* 2222 1370 N550 36.5 2.11 2375±12 2188 1329 130 Gr. Berger VLD H4831 39.0 1.70 2200* 2055 1219 IMR4350 33.5 1.31 2300* 2151 1336 IMR4320 32.0 2.86 2340* 2191 1386 N550 36.0 1.46 2340±22 2191 1386 *Velocity estimated based on published data Average Group Size (in) [MOA] Bullet Powder Charge Weight (Gr.) 100 Yards 200 Yards 300 Yards 120 Gr. Nosler BT AA2520 33.5 0.63 [0.60] 2.26 [1.08] 3.01 [0.96] Remaining Velocity (FPS): 2276 2097 1927 Remaining Energy (ft-lbs): 1380 1172 989

   
         However, Dan was not impressed with the potential terminal performance of the Barnes TTSX bullets as compared to the known terminal performance of the Nosler BT.  His logic was flawless: he had killed all sorts of game with the BT, and knew it worked.  So, it was back to the drawing board.  Luckily, one of my favorite pastimes is to develop loads for a new firearm.  Based on published data, and 36 years of reloading experience, I began to develop loads using ten different powders and four different bullets.
 

            After several hours at the range with my Oehler 35P chronograph, the results were in.  I have decided that my 6.5 JDJ barrel is female: beautiful but moody.  Of the 16 loads tested to date, only two shoot below 1 MOA.  Luckily, the best of those groups is with the 120 Gr. Nosler BT!   The use of 33.5 Gr. of Accurate 2520 results in groups that often are in the 0.50" range.

            I finally had the accurate load I needed to stalk pronghorn antelope in the high plains of Wyoming.  Under the brutally hot sun of August in Southern Louisiana, I headed out to the 600-yard range at the Palo Alto Rifle & Pistol Club near Donaldsonville, LA.  After a day at the range, I made an important, but expensive discovery: the Bushnell Elite 3200 2-6X scope on my 6.5 JDJ was fantastic for hunting situations from 0-200 yards, but was inadequate for those 300 yard shots.  I hear you asking, “Why?”  The answer is simple: with the scope sighted in at either 100 or 200 yards (or anyplace in between), shots out at 300 yards fell well below the target.  Through careful experimentation, I found that the correct aiming point was somewhere between the crosshairs and the point at which the reticle went from thin to thick.  My problem was that when I had plenty of time to estimate the correct aiming point, I could get reasonably good groups for hunting purposes; however, in the heat of the moment with that trophy pronghorn just itching to spring off towards the horizon, I was very worried that I would not be able to get the shot right. 

Yards  Ballistic Plex Reticle Drop Calculated Bullet Trajectory Drop Variance (inches) 100 Crosshairs 1.0 1.0 146  Crosshairs 0.0 200 -3.1 -3.1 0.0 300 -13.5 -15.1 -1.6 400 -30.1 -36.2 -6.1

          Again, I went to Dan for advice.  Dan suggested I look into getting a Burris 2-7X handgun scope with a Ballistic Plex™ reticle.  Given that my Wyoming hunt was a mere three weeks away, and I had to be confident in my 300-yard shots, I broke out the AmEx and ordered the scope.  There are several ways to use the Ballistic Plex™, and the Burris website gives a great description of each of the methods one may use to get the most out of the scope.  Based on calculations for my bullet and velocity, I chose to sight in my scope at 146 yards.  The plexes on the scope have been designed by Burris to be as useful as possible for as many different cartridges as possible.  Using ballistic software, I calculated the anticipated trajectory for my load of 33.5 Gr. of AA2520 under a 120 Gr. Nosler BT at 2463 FPS.  Theoretically, with the crosshairs zeroed at 146 yards, the crosshairs would place shots 1.0 inches high at 100 yards, the first plex should be dead on at 200 yards, the second plex should be 1.6 inches low at 300 yards, and the third plex should place shots 6.1 inches low at 400 yards.

To give more of a hunting feel to the sighting in process, a ½-scale antelope target was used.  The author aimed center mass on the target using the white patch on the mid-body as his aiming point.  The vital area could not be seen from 200 or 300 yards.  Holes resulting from experimentation with the Elite 3200 scope previously mounted on the pistol are covered with black squares.

I chose to use the second plex below the crosshairs to sight in the scope at 300 yards.  This is a lot more difficult than it sounds, and required a great deal of practice before I became really proficient at shooting reasonable groups of about 1 MOA.  Sighting in involved the use of a Caldwell Tackdriver™ shooting bag from a concrete bench at standard targets.  Once the zero had been confirmed, the pistol was again fired at 200 yards, and then at 100 yards to confirm that the calculated ballistics matched the actual ballistics.  Although not perfect, they matched close enough for hunting situations.  
 

Finally, shots were taken from the bench, and from the ground using my day pack as a shooting rest on a ½-scale antelope target (shots taken from 300 yards appeared to be an antelope standing at 600 yards).  In addition to boosting my confidence in my ability to take that 300 yard shot at an antelope, I learned something very important: it is really difficult to shoot a pistol from the ground using a backpack as a rest.  I also learned that shooting from a purpose-built tripod was impossible at those distances.

So, how did the cartridge perform on my trip to Wyoming?  The bottom line is that I'd love to tell you, but I can't.  As the sun rose on the morning of my hunt, I found myself sitting on a butte about 150 feet above the plains.  I could easily see many miles in every direction. I had a very nice buck on the butte with me that was easily within pistol range at about 150 yards; however, there were also two does below me on the plain.  When I tried to move into position to get a shot on the buck, the does saw me and the buck ran down onto the plains to be with them.  The shot I did take was really outside of my comfort zone, and was taken from a precarious laying position with the pistol on my pack below the rest of my body.  The shot went clean over the buck, who didn't stick around for an encore shot.  I ended up taking several long shots that day with my pistol, all of which were clean misses.  So, in the afternoon, I broke out the rifle and took a nice buck at 354 yards with a 6.5 X 55 custom Mauser that I built.

After the hunt that night at dinner my outfitter, J.T. Nunn and I were talking about next year's hunt.  We decided that the best approach for getting a shot on a buck would be to use an archery blind set up over a watering hole.  So although I was not successful in 2011 with the 6.5 JDJ, I feel confident that this time next year I'll be telling you all about the pronghorn taken with my pistol.

Resources mentioned in this article
Accurate Powders	http://www.accuratepowder.com/
Alliant Powders	http://www.alliantpowder.com/
Barnes Bullets	http://www.barnesbullets.com/
Bar-Nunn Hunting	http://www.bar-nunn.com/
Berger Bullets	http://bergerbullets.com/
Burris Pistol Scopes	http://www.burrisoptics.com/burrisusa.html
Bushnell Pistol Scopes	http://www.bushnell.com/hunting/
Caldwell Shooting Supplies	http://www.battenfeldtechnologies.com/caldwell/
Hodgdon and IMR Powders	http://www.hodgdon.com/
Nosler Bullets	http://www.nosler.com/
Oehler Ballistic Chronographs	http://www.oehler-research.com/index.html
Palo Alto Rifle & Pistol Club	http://paloaltogunclub.com/
SSK Industries	http://sskindustries.com/
Vihtavuori Powders	http://www.lapua.com/en/products/reloading/vihtavuori-powders