30 Nosler and 240gr Sierra's...1 mile?

[ISS]

I'm getting myself a one mile rifle for Christmas.
Terminus Zeus LA in a CERUS stock.
I am thinking a 1:9" twist and the Sierra 240gr bullets.

Any experience or thoughts?

thanks all,

ISS

 

[SKWERLZ]

Should be good, I shoot the 183SMK with a similar BC and it’s pretty damn good at a mile.

 

[Bulletman]

240 grain 30 cal ?

 

[FeMan]

Congrats!! Your specs should be fine. I, like SKWERLZ, shoot 7mm to a mile and beyond with good results.

 

[30378]

Built a 30 Nosler on a Weatherby Mk V action, Bartlein 1x9 barrel at 28". Never had the lure for a mile but at 1000 yds it's a hammer with 215gr Bergers. H1000 almost 3100fps.

 

[ISS]

Thanks. The member I am getting the stock from had a stash of the 240gr Sierra 30 caliber bullets leftover from a previous project. Berger now has a 245gr 30, I am hoping to use their starting load data.

 

[WAMBO]

I shot a 30/338 Lapua Improved using the 240 SMK at a mile, accuracy node for me was 2880 fps, had no problems with it.
I could get 3100 fps but went from .5 moa at 1K to almost 1 moa using a 1-10" twist barrel.

 

[ShaunBrady]

That sounds like the start of a very nice rifle.

The Sierras might be a bit of a free horse though and cost a lot more going forward than they're worth.

The G7 on the 240smk is 0.331. It's from a time when 1:10 was a fast 30 caliber twist, the full impact of twist rate was poorly understood, 300wm was huge, IMR4831 was a very slow powder, 75moa was a lot of scope travel, and 1000 yards was a very long way. It was extreme in that market. They still have a following in the 30 caliber subsonic world.

The G7 on the 208AMax was nearly the same at 0.325. It was intended for the same twist rate limitations, but the additional speed significantly upped the performance.

The 215 Hybrid is a popular 1:10 twist ELR bullet with a G7 of 0.358. I have a leftover parts gun I shoot to a mile with these. It's a 24" 300wm R700 5R with the Remington barrel. It'll go 50% hits on a 24"x32" target at a mile if the wind is below maybe 10 mph. For long distance work, anything with a hollow point construction will require length sorting for best performance.

The G7 on the 225ELDm is 0.386 and it's available in commercially loaded ammo. I'm not recommending commercially loaded ammo for a mile, I'm just pointing out the market has advanced considerably.

For bullets straight out of the box, hand loaded, 30 caliber, 1 mile performance, the 230ATip is hard to beat. The G7 is 0.421 and they'll work with 1:9.

Just as the game changes between 100 and 1000 yards, it continues to change as we head to a mile. The largest problem stops being precision. Velocity and BC variations start to dominate. You'll find maximum velocity consistency below peak velocity and barrel wear has a lot to do with BC variations. Spending a lot of barrel life at 100 yards searching for ultimate precision is counterproductive from both equipment life and shooter development perspectives. After you've figured out how to load ammo with 10 shot extreme spreads lower than factory match ammo SDs, the precision pretty much takes care of itself with the required equipment and components.

Other mile+ capable 30 caliber guns I shoot regularly are a 26" RPR in 300PRC with the Ruger barrel and a 32" 300 Lapua magnum. The RPR is a 1:9 and uses the 230ATip. The 300 Lapua uses 32" 1:8 barrels. Two barrels in I'm still trying to decide on the 230 or 250 ATips. I've shot both rifles in local comps. The 26" 300PRC and 32" 300 Lapua are frustratingly close in scoring at 2100 yards. If the 300PRC hits 3, 4, 5, or 6 of 10, the 300 Lapua is good for 4, 5, 6, or 7 of 10. I have hits on a 37" target to 3300 yards with the Lapua. I haven't tried that with the PRC yet but doubt it'll do nearly as well at that distance.

 

[kyotekiller25]

The above poster summed it up quite well. I would think there would be much better bullets now a days for a mile than the brick of a 240g smk, but it will work if that's what you have.

I shoot out to 1400 quite regularly with a 7-300 Win Mag, Bartlein 28" 9 twist and 180g ELDMs at 3000fps and it does very well. I've always wanted to take it to a mile, I just haven't yet.

 

[ISS]

I went to Ko3M the second year they held it with a 300WM and 180gr MK's. That was a disaster past 800yds.
The winning rifles the past 3-4 years cost over $100K to replicate. I doubt I would go again, but I do want to try 1 mile here on all the unlimited ranges we call Public Ground I shoot Rockchucks on.

So, I am shopping components.

 

[SKWERLZ]

I went to Ko3M the second year they held it with a 300WM and 180gr MK's. That was a disaster past 800yds.
The winning rifles the past 3-4 years cost over $100K to replicate. I doubt I would go again, but I do want to try 1 mile here on all the unlimited ranges we call Public Ground I shoot Rockchucks on.

So, I am shopping components.

The classic 30 caliber 180SmK is quite a different bullet than the 240 especially at distance.

 

[DaveTooley]

Nothing wrong with the 240's. They have shot some very small groups at 1K. Without accuracy BC means little.

 

[ISS]

What DT said!

 

[ShaunBrady]

Without accuracy BC means little.

The problem is the longer you give it, the more ways time of flight finds to screw up accuracy and at 100 yards there is no way to discern what those impacts are going to be.

Starting with a default 26" 338 Lapua shooting 300 grain ATips at 2750 fps. A 10 shot string with 30 fps velocity ES and 3% BC spread was assumed.



Beyond 2000 yards, it continues to change until the 1000 yard priorities are completely reversed.



I produce these diagrams from range cards exported from AB Analytics. It's easy enough to crunch out 1 point with most solvers, this format was selected to show the bigger picture.

We can use these to look at 3 ways to potentially improve ELR performance, ammo consistency, raw velocity, and raw BC.

Starting with ammo. Beginner or entry level approximates factory match ammo, 60 fps ES and 6% scatter on the BC. Intermediate is 30 fps and 3%. Advanced is 15 fps and 1.5%. All for what you can be reasonably confident the next 10 shot string out of the ammo box will produce. ES is actually a poor way to do statistics, but it's what we tend to recognize through the scope. I'm using 4X the SD to estimate ES. 19/20 shots should fall into that estimate. 2/3 will be within 2X the SD. ELR shooting strategies generally try to figure out where the center is to keep as many of those 2/3 on the target as possible.

If we plot just the RMS values for each level, it looks like this for that 338.



I've plotted wind as well to give a sense of the relative sizes of the vertical and horizontal problems. 2 mph of wind in this context mean you can pick up and respond to a 1 mph change in wind. That might be 1 mph up or down, or a small change in direction.

I have a couple more plots with 140 ELDm from a 6.5CM and the 300 ATips at 3050 fps from a 33XC. These illustrate the effects of improving the time of flight by way of muzzle velocity or BC. The short version is 100 fps moves the curve 75 yards. A 10% improvement in BC moves it about the same.

The trick is selecting the velocity and BC that moves the curve as far down the course as possible before starting to incur penalties that start shifting the curve upward.

Shooters new to ELR are better off with relatively inexpensive easy to source equipment and ammo components. Until they can load Advanced level ammo, a smart alec with a 6.5CM might take their 338 apart at a mile. Most won't be able to duplicate the consistency of commercial match ammo with their first attempts.

This stuff is easier to internalize if you shoot with a large, responsive and relatively steep backstop. Even with that, it didn't really start to be obvious until accurate chronos that were easy to use anywhere became available. The high impacts from slow shots started the cognitive dissonance that eventually led to this. Litz had sections on BC variation in his second and third advancements books. AB also has a couple white papers online. The AB CDM data sheets that have been made public also add perspective.

 

[ShaunBrady]

I went to Ko3M the second year they held it with a 300WM and 180gr MK's. That was a disaster past 800yds.
The winning rifles the past 3-4 years cost over $100K to replicate. I doubt I would go again, but I do want to try 1 mile here on all the unlimited ranges we call Public Ground I shoot Rockchucks on.

So, I am shopping components.

The 180s were probably the second worst bullet choice, but at 6000 feet with a 300wm they probably should have been good for a bit more than that. They have the same 13 degree boattail that created the transitioning problems with the 168smk. Sierra and the military went to 9 degrees with the 175smk. The Litz bullet book also has a 9 degree on the 240. The 190smk also used both boat tails over the years. It was the bullet that Hornady used for comparison when advertising the 6.5CM outperformed the 300WM at 1000 yards.

Not 2 miles, about 210 yards short. The target is 37" or a bit over 1 moa. 2 for 10 if you don't want to watch the video. The elevation is 4000', which makes the target effectively ~150 yards farther than it would be at Raton. KO2M uses much larger targets. It's a tarted up RPR, I chamber my own barrels but even paying someone for that I'm not sure I could spend $10K with optics (ATACR + Wedge).

 

[ISS]

After discussion with a couple of ELR gunsmiths and competitors here, I am going to switch horses before midstream. It has been pointed out to me that the 300 Norma Magnum is a better option for ELR. A bit more MV at a slightly lower pressure due to increased case capacity.

thanks gentlemen,

ISS

 

[SKWERLZ]

After discussion with a couple of ELR gunsmiths and competitors here, I am going to switch horses before midstream. It has been pointed out to me that the 300 Norma Magnum is a better option for ELR. A bit more MV at a slightly lower pressure due to increased case capacity.

thanks gentlemen,

ISS

300 (and 338) Norma is a really nice middle of the road cartridge like the 7 short mags and can do mag feeding easily unlike the 300 RUM.

 

[ShaunBrady]

I was going to suggest skipping the 30 Nosler and going with the 300PRC or 300NM, but thought I'd been critical enough about your bullet choices. Your sigpic also suggested you might already have Nosler components.

I think the integral scope rail 3 lug R700 footprint actions are a clever bit of pragmatism. The Norma is a Lapua bolt face. The only R700/Lapua issue not addressed with that action is the 1.060" tenon. The current market demands interchangeability and the ability to use prefits, so upping the tenon to 1.125" or using finer threads are not options. I wouldn't worry about it with anything I built for myself, but completely understand why some gunsmiths won't. I'm a retired mechanical engineer who has run a lot of lapua casehead wildcats through multiple barrels on the same action, so I have data and am qualified to have the opinion. Chamber up 100 of them and turn them loose with the public? Not a chance. I don't think the stress levels are dangerous, but there is a perception they are and any stupid bit of reloading that blew up a gun would be hung on the gunsmith.

The 3 lug actions also feed a lot better than 2 lug because the case doesn't have to climb over the lower lug.

The 30 caliber cases that have 1 mile plus potential and have components available are:

300WM - 92 grains of water capacity
300PRC - 96 grains
300Nosler - 99 grains
300Norma - 104 grains
300Norma Improved - 108 grains
300Lapua - 113 grains
300RUM -115 grains

Seating a 30 caliber bullet in or out affects case capacity ~ 2 grains for every 0.100". Generally, botique brass is a grain or two lower in capacity, but this is down in the noise stuff. So is 300PRC vs 300Nosler case capacity for that matter.

Same bullet, same barrel, same pressure, the 300Norma is ~100 fps faster than the 300WM with the same powder. If Retumbo is used in the Norma and H1000 in the WM, there is about another 25 fps. I retired my first ELR 300WM barrel at 1400 rounds. The 4th was retired at 1000. Both the way they were shot and the retirement criteria changed with experience. My first 300Norma is done at 550. The WM had a steady diet of H1000, the Norma had 300 rounds with N570. I think the Norma barrels would go ~700 rounds if they were used and retired with the same criteria the WM go 1000, but I haven't chambered a second one yet. I'm retiring my second 300Lapua barrel at 500 rounds. It's been run on Retumbo at the velocities I ran the Norma on N570.

The Nosler was intended for the hunting market and don't take it off the fur ballistics. It uses lighter, lower BC bullets but higher velocities to maximize point blank range. This isn't a criticism. Thats a really large market. The freebore on the SAAMI chamber is 0.110".

The PRC uses a 0.237" freebore and the Norma 0.215". They're more suitable for ELR bullets. The 300PRC with a 230ATip touches the lands at just over 3.8". Too long for an AICS magazine. The 300 Norma case is 0.090" shorter. If you want to run the rear of a 230ATip bearing surface ahead of the neck/shoulder intersection in the Norma, it'll require more freebore and also be past magazine length. The value in moving the bullet forward in the neck is it's one of the lower overhead methods of making neck tension consistent and controlling velocity spread. I fought it for years to keep the rounds in the magazine and maintain the ability to jam bullets.

I've posted on the differences between bench rest and ELR ballistic priorities. My take on two things they have in common are the importance of tracking and everybody single feeds above a certain performance level. Guns will shoot different ammo, so it's possible to have both a mag fed and Sunday best load.

 

[ISS]

Shaun,

my thanks for the research you have done. I had initially chosen the Nosler for convenience. If you remember, there was a gorgeous CERUS reddish stock for sale here earlier. It just caught my eye, and kept catching it, so I ended up buying it. Then, further research led me to the Terminus Zeus LA. I have lost more than one trigger hanger pin over the last thirty-five years. The Zeus features screw-in pins, and the QC barrel system. Those were the deciding factors in my decision.

I was searching for a gunsmith to do the Nosler pre fit barrel. The two I talked to, neither has a Nosler reamer. Both have the 300 NM, and both prefer it to the Nosler. 'Nuf said.

thanks again,

ISS

 

[SKWERLZ]

Shaun,

my thanks for the research you have done. I had initially chosen the Nosler for convenience. If you remember, there was a gorgeous CERUS reddish stock for sale here earlier. It just caught my eye, and kept catching it, so I ended up buying it. Then, further research led me to the Terminus Zeus LA. I have lost more than one trigger hanger pin over the last thirty-five years. The Zeus features screw-in pins, and the QC barrel system. Those were the deciding factors in my decision.

I was searching for a gunsmith to do the Nosler pre fit barrel. The two I talked to, neither has a Nosler reamer. Both have the 300 NM, and both prefer it to the Nosler. 'Nuf said.

thanks again,

ISS

Yea
I’d go 300NM all day over 30 nosler just because of brass alone.