Round Down

- Joseph Von Benedikt

YOU KNOW the subsonic rimfire rounds so useful for quietly knocking off a varmint in the squash patch? Well, you can roll your own center fire ammo that’s almost as quiet. And not just for your .300 Blackout AR. You can make subsonic loads for any of your favorite center fire hunting rifles and use them to take varmints, predators, and even hogs and deer. There is a trick to it, though.

With common gunpowder, it’s generally not safe to under load high power center fire cartridges like the .270 or .308 so much that their projectiles move slower than the speed of sound. You need to use something else: namely, Hodgdon Trail Boss. Introduced just over a decade ago for cowboy-action shooters who wanted to shoot really light handloads, Trail Boss is an extremely bulky powder, which lets you fill an equal space with a smaller charge. For years, it has worked perfectly for loading revolver cartridge cases to full capacity for safe, light-recoil reloads. Now, with noise reduction in vogue, savvy handloaders are learning that it works just as well in center fire rifle cases.