Love my new 70 FTW but I had a coupe questions maybe yall could help me with, my 70 is a 308 and I have never been a 150gr kinna guy (not in 30 cal anyway) but that is what my 70 seems to like to shoot, is this all in my head or have some of you seen the same thing, it is a 1:12" twist unlike my other 30 cals.
Second question is pressure, I load for nine firearms and never had a sign of excessive pressure with Nosler's max loads until this one, actually had flat/leaky primers 2gr below max using Varget, is this normal in the Winchester rifles? If so is this a case of super tight chamber, a short throat, or a little bit of both? Does not look like I will be able to push much past factory speeds but this is my woods rifle I don't really need anything over 2800fps anyway, I have a WSM for that

If you are mostly concerned with accuracy and not so much about the highest obtainable velocity, you might want to try what I load for my model 88. The 88's also have a 1 in 12"twist rate barrel, ( 22" long). I've had the best results with 165gr. Hornady SST's, (you could try their A-max as a target / match bullet with the same load) with 43.3 grains of IMR 4895 measured at 2525 FPS at 10' from the muzzle. I got a a very respectable range in velocities of less than 20 FPS from the fastest to slowest in all of the 10 rounds I checked on the chrony. It shoots smaller than 1" groups at 100 yds with my 308. Your model 70 should have a much better potential for accuracy in the, might be worth a try.

Yeah she has accuracy potential, just over 1/2 MOA using Speer BTSPs and 44.5gr of Varget, not the fastest load out there though, est 2720fps which is fine but I have never used a 150gr 30 cal for hunting, I load 165gr SGKs in the 30-06 to devastating effect on deer, maybe too much so hunting in the brush like I am now. Who knows I might grow to like 150gr Speers but if not I'll find some 4895 and give your load a try, 30-30s have been killing truckloads of deer for a hundred years moving slower then that at the kind of ranges I am hunting. Have you ever noticed any Winchester 70s running higher then normal pressures or is this just a weird mismatch of Nosler load data and a Speer bullet, never seen pressure signs like that before.

I know that sierra data is not useable on most other bullets, not sure about speer / nosler though. I load Hornady bullets with Hornady data. Case life is important to me in almost all of my rifles, I've got a few odd calibers that are expensive to buy brass for so I don't try to push the limits too far. The max varget load for hornady's 150-155 grain bullets according to Hornady 8th edition is 44.9gr (M.V .should be in the area of 2700 fps in a 22" 1 in 12" twist barrel.) Have you possibly got some loose primer pockets in some older brass? I've thrown a few .308's away because they didn't feel right when priming. The 165 grain load I mentioned in my first post happens to be a "max load", but that's what has worked best for me, I never see pressure signs from 165 grain in my rifles. I tried some really light bullets in it just to see what could be done with it, 110 grains and a slightly compressed load of 4895, MV was 3110 FPS, but they were all over the map for accuracy. groups were 6"-8". I plan to develop a 130 grain load soon, I think 130's willstabilize better and around 3000 FPS is attainable if I can get it dialed in.

Never mind, it is the powder not the rifle, I ran some max charges of 748, 4350, and Big Game through it today with no problem at all, either Nosler was way off on their pressures or I just got a bad batch of Varget, I tried the Varget with the Nosler BT today same pressure issues, however it does shoot great with a "mild" 44-45gr dose under a 150gr

Glad you got it sorted.