Newb Question! Ejector marks on .300 win mag brass

[jkasper119]

I own a Remington 700 chambered in .300WM (item #85505). It has a 26'' stainless steel 5r barrel. I am relatively new to hand loading, but I'm very meticulous and take my time to follow all the necessary safety precautions, and measure cases/charges. I recently started trying to work up a load using Federal GM215M Primers, Federal brass (previously fired from my rifle and neck sized), SMK 220 HPBT, and Hogdon Retumbo. I used a Lee reloading manual to find a starting load of 76 grains, and worked my way up to 81 grains in increments of 1% charge increase. At 79.5 grains, I started to notice ejector marks on the back of the brass, where the ejector flattened/smoothed the brass, although it did not create a lip, or cause any noticeable damage to the brass. The bolt was never "heavy" to lift with the hotter loads, although it did seem to get harder to pull the bolt back to extract the fired case as the charges increased. Where my question lies, is that after I went home from the range and looked at all my spent casings, even from factory loads, I was able to find a small half circle, that appeared to be caused by the edge of the ejector during firing. All of the factory loads were also Federal brass. So my question is, should I expect to see slight ejector marks on all of my spent casings? My theory is that the higher than average pressures (relative to other calibers) generated by the .300WM may make ejector marks unavoidable with any load, so I'm hoping that somebody with much more experience than myself can shed some light on my issue, so I know what charge to go with for my next batch of rounds I load.

I greatly apologize if I posted this in the wrong area, or if this is a repost, as I'm new to this forum and couldn't find a better place to post my question.

 

[woodspider]

Can you post a pic of the marks?

 

[jkasper119]

Here ya go! In the first image, you can clearly see the heavy ejector mark left on the shell casing. In the second image, it's harder to see, but you can the very faint "half circle" that I mentioned earlier, directly above the "FC" on the casing. The second image is of a factory load, whereas the first image with the heavier mark is of my hottest hand load that I mentioned above. My lightest hand load also has the same very faint mark as the factory load does, and as the charges increase in my hand loads, the mark slowly gets bigger until it's the size of the mark on my heaviest load.