This weekend we had a shoot where we were shooting originals. The sights  had to be original and the barrel original with the idea was just to try to re-create a little bit of the past. I have a 40-85 Ballard in a Montana that has a perfect bore. So I decided to load it as close to original as I could. I was only able to get 83 grains of powder in the case without it over flowing. But I did use a 330 grain paper patched bullet over a case full of powder.  I used a card wad and powder compressed to make room to finger seat the bullet.

The rifle shot extremely well. The targets were a series of swinging gongs ranging from quite large the very very small all shot at 100 yards. And there was a tiny little desk couple inches in diameter on one of the swing and a tiny little ducky on the counter weight and for bonus points we could shoot for those. But truth be told with open sights it was pretty hard to see them. We had two shots at each gong and if we missed twice we were out. The Ballard worked perfectly, I shot every one in order never once missed. I even hit that little tiny gong and the the ducky. I have to admit that 40-85 is a whopper of a cartridge. But it’s surprising how incredibly accurate it was even with open sights. Here’s a picture of the 40-85 cartridge next to a 25-20 cartridge for comparison. It’s an impressive cartridge. I had to make the cases from 9.3 by 73R so the rim was thiner than original but I just put a small O-ring on the base of the case to take up space. This was the most fun I’ve had a paper patch in a long time.

Sorry, you’re right it is a Pacific.  Very nice rifle for sure.