By Jeff Brown
In what is looking likely to become an annual event I am presently preparing for an Easter hunting trip with my brother. Last year (2021) we met at a farm he has access to and spent a couple of days during the Easter break shooting rabbits in order to assist the landowner with pest control. Click HERE for that report. Rabbits are at plague proportions in certain parts of our country and as a result permission to hunt on private land is seldom difficult to achieve. Farmers have even been known to supply ammunition.
This year I intend to carry, for part of the weekend, my faithful old Martini .310 Cadet. Over the years this little rifle has become one of my favourites as it is so mild to shoot, easy on the ears/shoulder and runs on the sniff of a canister of Alliant's age old and time tested Unique propellant. A small challenge however is both of the CBE pattern bullets I have for loading are round nose and not entirely ideal for hunting small game. Though the bullets measure a healthy .320 (nominal) in girth and have a muzzle velocity of 1300fps experience with similar RN projectiles in my .32/20 has taught me that other than solid head or shoulder hits the RN bullets tend not to anchor bunnies on the spot; our rabbits and hares are very tough little critters. Many well read bullet casters will be familiar with discord heaped on the traditional .44 Special factory loads supplied with round nose bullets at a sedate velocity. Terminal performance of that round is greatly improved by substituting a SWC or FN bullet in order to impart greater energy upon impact and the little .32/20 and Cadet are no different. Even the tiny little FN on my Lyman 225415 loaded in a .22 Hornet or .223 Rem has noticeably better killing powder than a similar weight RN bullet.
In what is looking likely to become an annual event I am presently preparing for an Easter hunting trip with my brother. Last year (2021) we met at a farm he has access to and spent a couple of days during the Easter break shooting rabbits in order to assist the landowner with pest control. Click HERE for that report. Rabbits are at plague proportions in certain parts of our country and as a result permission to hunt on private land is seldom difficult to achieve. Farmers have even been known to supply ammunition.
This year I intend to carry, for part of the weekend, my faithful old Martini .310 Cadet. Over the years this little rifle has become one of my favourites as it is so mild to shoot, easy on the ears/shoulder and runs on the sniff of a canister of Alliant's age old and time tested Unique propellant. A small challenge however is both of the CBE pattern bullets I have for loading are round nose and not entirely ideal for hunting small game. Though the bullets measure a healthy .320 (nominal) in girth and have a muzzle velocity of 1300fps experience with similar RN projectiles in my .32/20 has taught me that other than solid head or shoulder hits the RN bullets tend not to anchor bunnies on the spot; our rabbits and hares are very tough little critters. Many well read bullet casters will be familiar with discord heaped on the traditional .44 Special factory loads supplied with round nose bullets at a sedate velocity. Terminal performance of that round is greatly improved by substituting a SWC or FN bullet in order to impart greater energy upon impact and the little .32/20 and Cadet are no different. Even the tiny little FN on my Lyman 225415 loaded in a .22 Hornet or .223 Rem has noticeably better killing powder than a similar weight RN bullet.
Not wishing to purchase a hunting specific flat nose bullet for Cadet the solution is to alter the nose profile by some means. In the past I have very successfully converted Cadet bullets to HP by carefully aligning them in the chuck of my mini lathe and running a center drill into the nose and when cast in go to nominal 40-1 alloy these made for excellent wallaby hunting bullets. Other being rather time consuming to create a HP of this nature is unnecessary for small game in a .31cal bullet as has been previously proven when shooting the old Lyman 311008 FN at subsonic velocities from my suppressed .32/20; a load more than capable of downing our very large European hares.
The solution has been in the form of a cylindrical jig created into which a complete loaded round is inserted and when fully seated exposes just the very tip of the bullet. A coarse file is then used with repeat strokes until the nose material has been removed level with the top of the cylinder. The process takes very little time and accuracy is generally on par with an unaltered round and certainly more than sufficient for small game hunting at ranges suitable for iron sights.
The solution has been in the form of a cylindrical jig created into which a complete loaded round is inserted and when fully seated exposes just the very tip of the bullet. A coarse file is then used with repeat strokes until the nose material has been removed level with the top of the cylinder. The process takes very little time and accuracy is generally on par with an unaltered round and certainly more than sufficient for small game hunting at ranges suitable for iron sights.
I am now looking forward to Easter and another trip to rabbit rich country on Matarae Station with big brother. He will likely again roll his eyes at my choice of firearm as he prone to do but if history is any indication will be suitably impressed by the end results.
