I've just picked up a Trail's End Octagon Hunter and find that Beartooth and Leadhead bullets crimped at the cannelure will not cycle; only Barnes Originals in the same weight (250gr) which seat much deeper will cycle.

May Beartooth bullets be seated deeper than the cannelure and crimped using a Lee Factory Crimp die without ruining accuracy or raising pressures significantly?

Thanks for your replies!

First and foremost you must slug your bbl, in order to determine the dia of the bullet needed. Your groove dia in a trails end I know nothing about, the marlins in this cal average .378 to .379. Now for a little expierience. The Barnes originals run, .377 with that in mind. The cast bullets in this cal can be had at .377 to over .380. If your chamber is not large enough this would cause a problem with most anything over .379, I have used cast in .377 and .379 with no problems in my marlin. Others I have talked to tried .380 and they could not get their levers closed. Some have removed the decapper out of their dies and slightly resized the case with bullet in it and said that worked. Me I would slug the bbl, check to find if the bullets are hitting the rifles lands, if so seat them deeper the use the factory crimp die. Try resizing one round to see if it will chamber.

barnes originals come in either .375 or .377 FYI

Thanks for your advice. Haven't yet slugged the barrel, but did call Winchester and was told they manufactured them with .390 groves.

Tried some Beartooth 250gr LFNGC in .378" today propelled by 30gr RX7, and seated with an OAL of 2.440" which functions reliably in the Octagon Hunter: no pressure sign, 1786 average MV, and had a SD of just over 10FPS...very promising.

Ran out of light before I could see what it'd do on paper- that'll be for another day. I'd expect the accuracy will suffer from the under-sized bullet, but we'll see...

Looks, like you found your bullet. Have fun it is an excellent caliber.

Used the deeper seating method at first...then trimmed some cases to the length needed to crimp at the supplied groove. As i was usuing reformed 30-30 cases that are already a bit short, wasn't much of a trim job. No difference in accuracy, no difference in pressure (base of the bullet sets case volume, reguardless of the length you shorten the case to).


that 30gr. of Rx7 was about as far as I cared to go...probably there is a bit more vel. to be had, but not enough to be worth the effort.

Accuracy may not suffer, gas checked bullets are a bit more tolerant.