308 bullet suggestions for 1000 yards

[Mr Underbridge]

F class and palma guys shoot at known distances they dont care if their bullet has a trajectory of a bowling ball.
That is why all the tactical precision rifle matches are peppered with 6.5mm guns. Comparing 6.5mm and 308 berger bullets they both have roughly the same BC and are a wash windage wise lets say 308 win 185 jugg compared to 6.5X45 lap 130 hybrid. But the 6.5 has much less drop.
At least according to bergers ballistic calculator and applied ballistics.

But we derailed this discussion.

OP Berger 185gr bullets do very well in the wind. IF you want to learn to shoot in the wind go with a lighter cheaper bullet such as 155 sierra matchking that will give you lots of feedback.

 

[mysticplayer]

P72, you HAVE had some very competent and experienced FTR shooters give you honest real world answers.. and politely no less. At least one will be representing your country at the worlds next year. Don't think he got on for just his good looks

The US FTR team may (I am pretty sure on this) have tested a few bullets now and then looking for any opportunity. They might have even shot more then 2X 5rds groups just to prove the point.

I am going out on a limb here but suggest the US FTR team might know a thing or two about bullets at 1000yds. I would certainly bet a double double on that.

You can sit and read and ponder the math til the cows come home. My suggestion is get out to the range and shoot (seems you are a bit lacking in that respect). It becomes very obvious that the math isn't complete so doesn't give you the real story.

The results that have been offered may not be sexy nor the answer you want to hear. Too bad... when 200 to 300 competitors shoot somewhere around 136 to 175rds each in similar conditions over 3 days at a single event, there is a wee bit of information of what is working and what is scoring.

then multiple events around the world compete to prove what is best for the FTR game.

you can believe the real world info or not but I am kind of thinking a million or so rds fired per year ought to be pretty good sample size.

If memory serves me, at the 2013 Worlds Team event, the 2nd place Canadian Team didn't shoot a 155.5gr bullet. BUT I do know the Brits in 3rd did.

YMMV.

Jerry

 

[P72]

It would appear that the latest responses indicate an avoidance of the "form factor" business or more likely ignorance. True some .308 and 6.5 bullets may have similar BC's but the measured drag or form factors are greatly in favor of the 6.5 bullets. This is why, "But the 6.5 has much less drop" (a lighter bullet having more velocity with higher BC's for their caliber and weight and better flight characteristics including wind resistance). Pages 164 - 170 of the Berger manual get into form factors in detail.

I see the originator of this business wanted to know what type bullet to use in his Savage rifle. Possibly this rifle is intended for ammo having SAAMI specifications. If so the material presented on pages 148-158 (Effects of Cartridge Over All Length (COAL) and Cartridge Base to Ogive (CBTO), also by Bryan Litz. This section gets into the effects of seating depth/COAL on pressure and velocity. As an extreme example consider the 215 grain .308 bullet used in a .308 cartridge having SAAMI specifications that might be used by the Savage rifle owned by the OP. The question was a simple one - what kind of bullet to use at 1000? Continuing on - what kind of velocities might be realized with a 215 grain bullet seated so it would work in that Savage (SAAMI) rifle chamber? The statement on page 148, Berger manual, "In fact, the extra powder you can add to a cartridge with a bullet seated long will allow you to achieve greater velocity at the same pressure than a cartridge with a bullet seated short.", page 148. Mr. Litz then continues on, page 151, "SAAMI COAL Limits ballistic Performance".

Reading this stuff makes me believe that the ballistic advantages of the long and heavy 185 and 215 bullets would be negated by the limitations of powder capacity caused by deeply seated bullets resulting in lower velocities for ammo used in a standard SAAMI chamber that is probably found in this Savage rifle. Would these slower 215 and 185 bullets remain super sonic at 1000 yards when used in a SAAMI chamber?

Upon reading the OP post my thoughts were to evaluate bullet performance using the "form factors" as discussed on pages 164-170 of the manual vs just selecting a bullet by BC because that loaded round may be required to fit inside a standard SAAMI chamber. The standard SAAMI chamber would not allow, by virtue of limited case capacity to shoot 185 -215 grain bullets at velocities approaching low level .300 Win mag loads from a .308.

My brief reference to the 'form factor" business plunged this into some sort of pedigree (heritage?) fest where the exploits of various shooters were displayed without any specific info such as loads used and more importantly COAL.

True, I have only competed in one 1000 yard match and not being limited to a .308 selected a 6.5, but for probably 35-40 times per year I have shot up a 1100 yard steel target shaped like those used for police training. This gave me the opportunity to evaluate various bullets and learn more about what could be used in my SAAMI chambered .308. My overall conclusions were that the 155 Berger bullet performed possibly better than the 175 Sierra probably because it could be driven about 200 fps faster and had a lower form factor. Berger bullets are pricy so I went to Barnes Match Burner 155's available at $25 per box cheaper on sale at Cabello's and used them with my big jug of Varget.

Specifically what math is lacking - this is not "rocket science". The variables regarding and limited to bullets appear to be sectional density, form factor and ballistic coefficients (BC=SD/form factor)? Lower form factor, same SD, higher BC.

In closing --- "Next time you're considering the performance potential of a bullet for long range shooting, be sure to ask yourself how the form factor compares with other bullets in its class" Page 170 Berger manual. I attempted to get this idea across with my suggestion of a consideration of the form factor business and a read of this stuff for a bullet selection for the Savage rifle that could have an SAAMI spec chamber..

 

[mysticplayer]

I will add this as I am sure some of the audience aren't that familiar with real world shooting and some info here may make their LR journey that much more difficult.

When crunching numbers on an app, remember there is max velocity as supposed on the internet, and there is max ACCURATE velocity that any particular barrel will give you. There can be a huge difference in predicted and actual. I would love to hear some real world 26" factory barrels that can spit a 155/155.5gr bullet at OVER 2900fps in mag fed ammo ACCURATELY. I seem to have seen chrony numbers more in the sub 2900fps range but maybe air is more dense up here

When discussing OAL limited ammo, BC becomes even more important as you are now really limiting the amount of fuel available. See first point.

When trying to go super fast with light bullets, the loss in potential velocity is far greater then in a "slow" set up. Barrel length and barrel characteristics typically favor the slower/heavier option wrt to obtainable results ie... the velocity loss per inch of barrel for a 22-250 is far greater then a 45-70

Berger 185gr OTM's fit in a AICS mag... as does the yellow box version.

As a point of reference, my 185gr match load will fit in an AICS mag and is run in a SAAMI spec chamber so....

FTR started with a max weight of 156gr just like Palma. When the sport evolved and the targets shrank in half and the bullet weight lifted, the rush to heavier higher BC bullets was on. In fact, this rush was so big, it allowed an innovative company like Berger to really show some very new and exciting technology. A change so profound, it has driven the entire bullet industry to new heights.

A comparison of bullets based on 1960's technology is fine but the LR 308 shooting world has moved on. The Palma weights and old stand bys like the 175gr MK will serve shooters very well for decades to come BUT things have moved a long ways from there.

The question was best bullet suggestions for 1000yds. Factory rifle or high tech FTR, air and gravity doesn't care and the direction is very very clear.

A more important question, how does the OP handle recoil cause as bullet mass goes up, so does the fun at butt end.

YMMV

Jerry

 

[mysticplayer]

The amazing Tony Robbins has some classic advice for this situation. Roughly paraphrased, "If you want to learn a new task quickly and well, find a mentor who is already performing at a high level and copy what he does." Now the trick is to learn who those people are and to learn enough of the details of what they are doing so you can copy the critical stuff. I suggest you re-read Jerry's post above.

Short answer to the OP's question: use Berger 185+ bullets for 1,000 yard competitions. The 185 LRBT is an incredibly reliable and battle-tested bullet. The 200 Hybrid is almost as reliable with a significant bump in BC for windy conditions. Berger has a lock on the best 30 cal bullets for 1K shooting currently. I'm hoping Sierra is going to start updating their 40 year old designs soon!

My info suggests new and exciting stuff to follow the 7mm 183gr MK... and they will be in the 30cal family.

Jerry

 

[XTR]

My info suggests new and exciting stuff to follow the 7mm 183gr MK... and they will be in the 30cal family.

Jerry

That would be really nice.

 

[P72]

Any load data including velocities with that 185 grain match load in a SAAMI chamber??

 

[XTR]

We all shoot SAAMI chambers, that's in the rules for F-TR. Are you referring to a specific OAL with the 185?

 

[Ned Ludd]

We can discuss BCs and form factors and the like until the cows come home without really arriving at any "universal" answer to the OPs question. The bottom line is that there are really two major things that play a large role in bullet selection. The first is the rifle itself; how it is chambered, and how long of a barrel it has. In 1000 yd F-Class shooting, precision and consistency are the keys. Using the highest BC bullet that can be loaded optimally in your rifle (i.e. chamber dimensions, powder capacity, and seating depth), and with good precision, is exactly where you want to be. However, there is a caveat to that, which is the second major consideration: recoil management. Not everyone can reliably handle the recoil of the 200+ gr bullets in a .308. If you're dropping points due to vertical caused by recoil management issues, you're losing some of the benefit of the higher BC bullet. So I would adjust the prior statement to include that using the highest BC bullet that can be loaded optimally in your rifle with good precision, AND for which you can effectively manage the recoil is exactly where you want to be.

 

[Laurie]

It would appear that the latest responses indicate an avoidance of the "form factor" business or more likely ignorance. True some .308 and 6.5 bullets may have similar BC's but the measured drag or form factors are greatly in favor of the 6.5 bullets. This is why, "But the 6.5 has much less drop" (a lighter bullet having more velocity with higher BC's for their caliber and weight and better flight characteristics including wind resistance). Pages 164 - 170 of the Berger manual get into form factors in detail.

Yes, the form factor is an important metric .... it can hardly be otherwise when BC is a ratio of mass related sectional density to the form factor !! Comparing the FF of a 6.5mm bullet to that of a .30 is pretty meaningless though when the OP's question is about L-R bullets for a 308 Win rifle.

Now, as you are 'hot' on form factors, here's a question for you. If two bullets in a calibre but in different weights have identical FF values, will they give identical performance at equivalent MVs? 'Equivalent' is defined as per Bryan Litz's guideline of MVs that produce identical MEs.

To let you play with the apps or whatever, I'll give you a slight helping hand. The 175gn Berger BT LR and Sierra 210gn MK have the same form factor values as ascribed by Bryan Litz from his range testing techniques - or so close as to be identical within the accuracy tolerances of his methodology. That is 0.999 and 1.000 i7 factors for the Berger and Sierra respectively.

Jerry (Mysticplayer) and Monte (Milanuk) have, as guys who've been there, learned things the hard way, shot for their countries, and won cabinets full of medals and cups in FTR and F-Class given some pretty (really!) sound advice in their posts as have some others in this thread.

Those of us who've shot 308s in L-R competition for a bit and been around the houses, know too that the external ballistics figures tell you some really important things, but there are other less tangible factors too that affect scores, especially in long days with two, three, or four matches. For instance, Jerry and Monte both mention the recoil issue. The heavier the bullet, the greater the recoil (and, often forgotten or ignored, the torque which is particularly significant in bipod supported rifles) affecting gun handling and also shooter fatigue build-up. Irrespective of what the apps say, some people do better with a lighter bullet and lower recoil / torque levels dropping fewer points in long runs of shots and matches, even though it is theoretically inferior to a heavy one. 185gn bullets are sometimes the dividing line for supported rifles; most 308 sling shooters say 175gn is as heavy as they can cope with.

 

[Steve Blair]

I will add this as I am sure some of the audience aren't that familiar with real world shooting and some info here may make their LR journey that much more difficult.

When crunching numbers on an app, remember there is max velocity as supposed on the internet, and there is max ACCURATE velocity that any particular barrel will give you. There can be a huge difference in predicted and actual. I would love to hear some real world 26" factory barrels that can spit a 155/155.5gr bullet at OVER 2900fps in mag fed ammo ACCURATELY. I seem to have seen chrony numbers more in the sub 2900fps range but maybe air is more dense up here

Jerry,
I have a 26" tactical rifle that shoots Berger 155.5 Fullbores particularly well. It has a Palma '95 chamber and rounds are loaded to 2.881". They fit in my five and ten round mags. It runs ~2975 fps with 8208 XBR. Barrel is a 10" twist Bartlein 5R. It may be a fast barrel but has produced a similar result with two lots of 8208 and in both standard and Palma Lapua brass with no apparent ill effects. It's won a few F-Class matches at 300 and 600 yards off a Harris bipod.

 

[Cyclops]

My son & I are relative novices shooting F/TR.
We shoot a custom rifle with a Barnard 'P' action and a 32" 1:10 twist True-Flite barrel.
Between use we fire about 2500 handloaded rounds per season.

Because my son is tall and skinny we shoot 155gr Lapua Scenar projectiles (for less recoil) in Lapua Palma (small rifle primer cases) with 45.0 gr Varget.

This combination is competitive out to 1000 yards.
Remember Target Rifle competitors are limited to 155gr projectiles and shoot open sights over the same distances.

Heavy bullets may give you better performance at more cost.
The question may be can you tell the diffence?

 

[memilanuk]

We all shoot SAAMI chambers, that's in the rules for F-TR. Are you referring to a specific OAL with the 185?

'no bigger than' SAAMI might be more correct... I know you know that, but for those reading along that might not...

Some of the SAAMI (factory) chambers on rifles I've owned have been pretty generous in the throat area... as in they'd make Roy Weatherby proud. So just because someone has a SAAMI chamber doesn't necessarily mean they can't seat the bullets long out towards the lands.

Now, if a person wanted to say, limit OAL to SAAMI published OAL for factory ammo so as to guarantee feeding from a Rem700SA or whatever other reason, then yeah... the 155 is going to make some serious inroads on the heavies. The 155s basically don't have as much bearing surface, so stuffing them down in the case neck doesn't hurt the boiler room as much as trying to stuff a 200 Hybrid down to 2.810" would. The 155s can still make 2800-2900+ from a shorter tube, depending on the barrel, but the velocities for the bigger bullets start coming down in a hurry. Changing powders may alleviate some of that loss, but may bring other headaches along with.

 

[P72]

My original suggestion was to evaluate the performance of various bullets using G7 form factors rather than G7 BC's.

I also noted that Berger bullets such as the 185 Juggernaut, 190 VLD, and 210 VLD displayed less drag or had lower form factors than the 155.5, thus they could be expected to display better ballistic characteristics. This assumes optimum velocities can be reached and everything fits inside a SAAMI spec chamber - this is to meet the expectations of the Savage rifle guy.

Now what about the other bullets, some of which have been used for decades. Taking a look at these bullets, all of which have G7 BC's exceeding the 155.5 Berger.

The following bullets have G7 BC's that exceed the 155.5 Berger - .237 and all of these have inferior form factors or display more drag than the 155.5 Berger. For example - 175 Si MK, BC .243, - 190 Si MK, BC .270 - 200 Si MK, BC .285 - 185 Scenar BC .247 - 178 Amax BC .240.

Taking a look at these using the new Hornady ballistics calculator that accepts G7 BC's shows that all of the above display inferior ballistics at 1000 than the 155.5 Berger. My .308 shot 155's at 2875, 175's at 2550 but I used 2600 to calculate. Not ever shooting 190's 2550 fps, 200's 2450 fps, 185's 2535 fps, or 178's 2550 fps. All these velocities appear to be reasonable. Again all the bullets used or looked at have more drag as indicated by higher form factors but also have higher G7 BC's.

As described in the Berger manual the BC = sectional density/ form factor. Or conversely form factor = sectional density/ BC.

Actual shooting experience at 1100 yards involved 155 Bergers, then 155 Barnes Match Burners at 2875, a real hot load, and the 175 Sierra MK at 2550, also hot. The calculated velocity for the 175 MK at 1100 at a mv of 2600 is 1185 fps approaching the speed of sound of 1135 fps. Performance was disappointing with the 175. Possibly some rounds were just under 1135 fps or so beyond 1000.

In closing, if I had to select a bullet I would, as recommended, look at the form factors vs just published BC's values. Running the ballistic calculator shows most of the other Berger bullets heavier than the 155.5 displayed superior or equal ballistics. An exception was the 168 VLD that had paper ballistics not as good as the 155.5 and that bullet had a BC of .242 and a form factor of 1.045. The other makers had inferior paper ballistics.

 

[memilanuk]

All these velocities appear to be reasonable.

All those velocities appear anemic, to the point of skewing your results in favor of your particular bullet choice.

 

[mysticplayer]

Jerry,
I have a 26" tactical rifle that shoots Berger 155.5 Fullbores particularly well. It has a Palma '95 chamber and rounds are loaded to 2.881". They fit in my five and ten round mags. It runs ~2975 fps with 8208 XBR. Barrel is a 10" twist Bartlein 5R. It may be a fast barrel but has produced a similar result with two lots of 8208 and in both standard and Palma Lapua brass with no apparent ill effects. It's won a few F-Class matches at 300 and 600 yards off a Harris bipod.

But a Bartlein is certainly no factory quality barrel.

Jerry

 

[Steve Blair]

But a Bartlein is certainly no factory quality barrel.

Jerry

True enough, Jerry. But surely if this Bartlein with a Palma '95 chamber can reach 2975 fps, good factory barrels like Sako or Steyr could top 2900. Next time I get out to the range, I'll try a short series in my SSG 69 (26") and see what it does.

 

[Mr Underbridge]

I can get 2937 avg with my 25" m24 barrel and sierra 155gr palma bullet using 8208 44.2 grains

 

[mysticplayer]

Mr.U and SB, why not load up some 185's and do a comparative test?

That would be interesting.

Jerry

 

[Mr Underbridge]

Right now I work too much to have time for that. I love 185 juggs on paper but most of my shooting is at 600 yards or less and the bergers are very expensive so I have no interest.