Headed over to the range today to try out a new load for my Winchester Model 1894 38-55. This particular rifle was made in 1904. It has a full octagon barrel and a tang sight. I set up the target at 100 yards and took five shots. Measuring with my steel ruler, all five shots went into a 1 & 7/8″ group at 100 yards. The load was 17.5 grains of 5744 under a 255 grain soft cast bullet sized to .380. To write this up, I went to weigh one of the sized and lubed bullets and noticed that the butt end seemed to have a lot of lube on it, so I wiped it off and made a discovery. These are gas checked cast bullets and I’d completely forgotten they were when I sized and lubed and loaded them! So that five-shot, 1 & 7/8′ group at 100 yards was shot with soft cast bullets that were missing their gas checks! I’m surprised they are so accurate without them. Having done that, I don’t see why I would bother with the expense of putting gas checks on them in the future. This particular load gives me a 10 shot average velocity of 1,365 fp with an E.S. of 29 fps. The temperature was in the 80’s and I have found 5744 to be temperature sensitive, so they will probably slow down to around 1,330 fps when hunting this fall in below freezing temps. Anyway, here are a couple photos …