looking for advice.
I am currently shooting a 6 dasher for f-class, most days at the 600 yard line I can hold my own. At 1000 I get my backside handed to me if the wind is not steady or calm.
I shoot a Panda F-class action on a Lee six stock, pondering a 7mm barrel for those blustery days. Either a 7-08AI or a straight 284 will do the job. Any other calibers I should consider? Thoughts on the idea?
Thanks in advance for the help.
CW
I think you have a few choices. It is fairly easy to pick bullets and calibers that will have less wind drift, but the wild card is recoil, and how much of an impact that will have on your accuracy. As an extreme example think about the 338 Lapua with a 300 grain OTM Tactical Hybrid Berger. It will hold up for you, but will you hold up to it?
A good way to choose a cartridge is to look at the
Berger Form Factor number. This chart is a bit outdated, and does not have their newest bullets, but the green highlighted bullets have the lowest form factor which means regardless of weight and BC they tend to perform the best at distance. The
Berger Quick Reference Sheet is more up to date, but lacks the green highlights to help you.
The first thing that the Form Factor shows is that the Berger 6mm 105 grain Hybrid Target is pretty darn good with a Form Factor of 0.925. It is notably better than the 115 VLD. So one option is would be to stay with the 6mm caliber, and consider a large capacity case which will give you more velocity with a sacrifice in barrel life. The 6XC would be a significant step up, and the boring 243 Winchester another smaller step. Brass is available from Lapua (neck up 22-250 for 6XC). Here is a graph from elsewhere on the Accurate Shooter site to give you some rough comparisons. There is also the uncommon 6mm Remington which has a long neck and even more capacity but brass could be an issue.
There are not many other bullets that do much better than the 6mm 105 Hybrid's 0.925. In 6.5mm there is the 135 grain Classic Hunter at 0.913 and the 140 grain Hybrid Target at 0.923. The 6.5-284 would do a good job of getting the velocity up, but you might not gain much over the 6mm 105 Hybrid. Brass available again from Lapua so that is good.
Then there is the 7 mm 195 gr EOL Elite Hunter at an excellent 0.892. But it has a thin jacket, and would it hold up to a long hot barrel shooting strings? And the recoil out of a SAUM? And where does the brass come from? The 180 grain VLD at 0.911 would address the thin jacket problem, but the other issues remain...
My thoughts would be because of the recoil issue to not go over 6.5mm, but hopefully this gives you some ideas. Start with the bullet, and consider the Form Factor, then decide how fast you want it to go, and that will give you the cartridge...
