Preping to Play with 300gr Berger Hybrids

[royinidaho]

Way to go Berger folks! Someone else I know of could use a little of Berger's transparency.

Don't cha just love life? As I've repeated before, "There ain't no free lunch"

Thanks Brian/Eric/Michelle et al.......

 

[royinidaho]

Still chugging along with the Hybrids.

US-869 and Retumbo didn't work worth a squat in my rifle.

Seated at different lengths per Eric's article. Was consistently 2 or so MOA @ 200.

Had a bit of H-1000. Gave the max listed load 88.5 gr a go. Did pretty well. Well better than 869 and Retumbo.

H-1000 isn't the velocity pusher of the other two.

Seeing as how all loads shot best when the bullet was touching the lands I jammed some 0.003 deeper into them. COL is bodacious. These shot really good but had a one flier in each of two 3 shot groups.

Jammed them an additional 0.003 for a total of 0.006". I screwed up the setting on the seating die and inadvertently crimped 9 shots for my next test.

The bolt closed really hard as the crimp wouldn't let the bullet slide. I was a bit concerned with pressure as I had upped the powder one grain to 89.5 to attempt to get at least 2700 fps MV.

I didn't need to worry. Pressure was well well withing reasonable. Velocity averaged 2703 with low teen ES.

COL is impressively long and I can't extract a loaded round without releasing the bolt. She hung right around 0.5" @ 200 so I think I'll leave her that way.

Zeroed @ 300 this afternoon in 35 mph winds. The wind was just a few degrees of being straight at me so I don't think I'll have to move the zero much when the wind is more favorable.

H-1000 give about 50 FPS less than the other powders I've tried which push the 300 SMK along at 2750 FPS depending on how bright the day is. (Great Chrony!)

Next comes some expansion tests and drop chart validation then she's ready to hang on the wall until its time go harvest something.

BTW the Bergers shoot a bit better than the SMKs in this rifle. Several tenths of an inch better @ 200.