I have been doing research on this myself. I have been looking at cast bullets for the same reason as you stated, the price of 375 is just astronomical. I emailed
http://www.cheycast.com/catalog.htm to see if their 38/55 bullets were sized and lubed. This is the response I got.
“Yes sized & lubed. They should work fine. just don't try to push them too fast.”
500 for 55 isn’t is a lot better than Hornady's
Also found these places
http://www.moyerscastbullets.com/pricelist.html http://www.montanabulletworks.com/wst_page5.html http://www.meisterbullets.com/asccustompages/products.asp?s=0&categoryid=22&Page=2 Just to let you know the Lyman reloading manual has the 249gr running up to 1900fps and the 264gr running up to 1800fps. That is with a 20 in barrel. In a 14 in barrel you are probably going to loose +/-200 fps.
I guess I have been comparing it to the 44Mag to long. I think a 250 bullet going 1600fps is still going to give something a very rude wake-up call. I also did the KO value’s on the 44 and 375. A 240gr 44mag bullet at 1400 fps had a KO of 21. A 249gr 375 Win bullet at 1600 fps had a KO of 21. I know it is just a bunch of bla bla bla bla bla, but I at least hope it helps some.
More bla bla… montanabulletworks states that you can run a HT gas-checked up to 1600 fps.
