6x47 with Nosler E-tip Bullets

[Bulseyetom]

I just returned to a very pleasant day at the range. Conditions were around 70 degrees with just enough wind to blow away the heat waves but not make it hard to read the conditions. I had good results with the Barnes 85 grain TSX bullet in this rifle and so I thought I would try some 90 Grain E-tips. The rifle has a 27" barrel with a 1:10 twist and throated bor 95 grain Bib bullets. I tried H414 in 0.2 grain increments from 39.5 to 40.5 grains. I seated them to jump 50 thousands as recommended by Nosler. Shooting was done off of a bench at 100 yards with my 6.5x20 Zeiss set at 20 power. All were 3 shot groups after firing 2 foulers of my standard 105 grain Speer bullet. Every group was less than 3/4" and two were around .4. The best loads were at 39.7 and 40.5. No signs of pressure with the cases extracting easy and no primer marks of any kind. The combo at 40.5 grains will probably be my hunting load and I see no reason to play with the seating depth as a 0.4 group is more than minute of deer, antelope, hog or coyote for a long way out there! Estimated velocity is around 3300 fps so I think I can go with a 300 yard zero and just shoot what I see. This bullet has an excellent bc of .403. I then tried a few 66 grain Fowler benchrest bullets to see how they shot with 45.0 grains of H414. They jump about a foot to hit the rifling but I got a 5 shot group of 1/2 inch with 3 virtually in on hole. That group was fired without cleaning the bore. Cleaning the bore was easy so the Nosler bullets must not copper foul bad at all. I give the Nosler bullets 2 thumbs up and will be loading some for the spring hog hunt coming up soon. Tom