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I'll keep you updated on the load development...

As far the rifle's purpose, well...

I live in southcentral Alaska. That is where I do the majority of my hunting also. Some of my deer hunts take place on the "big" islands of the Prince William Sound, mainly Hinchinbrook and Montague Islands. The cover is fairly thick, consisting mostly of devil's club and alder jungles, but there are several places to spot deer at a distance across muskeg patches or above the timberline. The deer aren't real big, but the coastal grizzly bears (brown bears) get absolutely huge. I also do quite a bit of moose hunting around Cape Suckling and the vegetation there is similar to the islands. Basically I wanted a short, well balanced, fast handling rifle that could shoot spitzer shaped bullets with a reasonable trajectory at 250 yards. The rifle needed to be a fast repeater, but I didn't want to sacrifice the trajectory like you commonly do with lever actioned rifles shooting blunt nosed bullets. I really wanted a rifle that was 40 cal or more, and shoot premium grade bullets with a sectional density of around .300. I figured this could handle moose on the far side of 250 yard muskeg meadow or a 1,000 pound upset brown bear at shoestring distance.

So far the rifle is performing as designed, but that case failure kinda has me spooked. I won't fire anymore of that brass until I'm confident that it was a fluke. I may have to get some 35 Whelen brass, expand and fireform. It will probably be a little while before I'm able to resume load testing.

My original idea was to use the 350 grain Swift AFrame as the "money" load, but those bullets are getting scarce. The 350 grain Barnes X has been discontinued also. I've got 5 boxes of each (350 grain X and Swift) and am hording those like gold. I do have several boxes of the 400 grain Woodleigh's and will proceed on testing those as soon as I get this brass thing figured out.

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