The Berger .308 cal 155.5 grain "Fullbore" bullet is a wonderful bullet. It is one of the very highest performance (high bc) bullets, and also one of the very-least-fussy (jump tolerant) .308 cal 155-grain-class bullets on the market. Unfortunately, I am not the only one who knows this so they can be difficult to get. And they are never cheap.
They are named after "fullbore shooting", which has a certain meaning in USA (prone slowfire at 3,5,600 yards) and a similar(ish) meaning outside the USA.
In Britain and to a certain extent in most Commonwealth countries, "smallbore" means .22 rimfire, and "fullbore" means "not smallbore", or in other words what a US shoot might call "highpower" (in the sense of centrefire rifle, not specifically across-the-course shooting), or "Palma" (quite close, read on...).
Traditionally, "fullbore" would mean .303 British, which is clearly a larger bore diameter than .22LR. But 303 is LONG obsolete, the main service cartridge became .308Win in the late 50s in almost every country. And today, in a sense .308Win is also long outdated and obsolete as an infantry rifle cartridge, being replaced by 556/223 for several decades now. But even though the infantry cartridge today is .224" diameter, then even though it might sound strange you'd still call 556 NATO a "fullbore" cartridge and not "smallbore", simply because it is a big (relative to .22LR) centrefire rifle cartridge.
The kind of traditional iron sight target rifle shooting done in Canada, UK, NZ, Aus, South Africa is typically called "fullbore" (though the South Africans will often call it "Bisley shooting"). Distances fired are 300,500,600,900,1000 yards, or on metric ranges the morally-equivalent 300,500,600,800,900m. The Brits and the South Africans put three shooters on a target and they fire shot by shot in turn. The Australians and New Zealanders do string firing, though it is "squadded string" which is a slightly different format than US "relay string" practice. Canada has done both pairs and threes firing.
It is prone slowfire shooting, with iron sights and sling, with .308 Winchester as the main cartridge. The rules also permit .223 Rem though it is not commonly used in most places yet. If it sounds almost exactly like "International" Palma except for the addition of short and mid-range distances.... that's because that's what it is.
Just as the Palma match chose a "less than 156 grain" bullet weight limit back in 1992, most "fullbore" countries have almost exactly the same rule (in 223 Rem, which is not yet widespread, various limits are 81 grains, 91 grains, or no limit)
So if a bullet is called "fullbore", it might be fair to expect....
- it is useful/applicable for .308Win or 223 Rem cartridges
- for .308 it is probably less than 156 grains and for .223 it is probably 80-90 grains
- because only slowfire is involved, there's no need for the nose or body design to allow the bullets to be seated to magazine length
- because they are slow-fired (i.e. very accurately broken shots) at all distances including long range, you would expect the performance (bc) to be at least "medium", or preferably "high"
- because some of us can be knuckledraggers, many of whom only load in order to shoot, an easy-to-load (unfussy w.r.t. langd engagement and load tuning) will tend to be more successful than a higher-performance but very fussy bullet (for example, Berger made a 155 VLD in the early 2000s which had superb performance, but whose accuracy was truly mediocre unless carefully loaded by a first rate handloader)
