Broz,
What's the story with these Bergers. How much better are they than the SMK in all truth?
I have just done some testing on some Rocky Mountain, 300 grain bullets with advertised B.C.'s through the roof but found the true B.C. to be very disapointing. I hope these Bergers are not the same.
You are shooting these Bergers. Whats the advantage if any over the SMK's.
I haven't tested the Gen2's as extensively as Broz. In my rig (Sako TRG-s rebarrelled and worked over by GAP), they group 0.2" - 0.4" better at 100 yards than the SMK's do/did for me. They seem to hold this accuracy improvement to 500 yards (especially vertical dispersion), which is as far as I have put them on paper so far.
I shot a four point mule deer yesterday at 385 yards with one of the Gen2's. Maybe it was just shot placement, but the damage was more devestating than I have seen with the SMK's. It looked like it penetrated then exploded like a grenade once inside the chest cavity. There were a lot of broken ribs on both sides.
The high B.C. numbers on the 300 gr Berger OTM's look sexy, but in actual drop and wind drift numbers out to 1000 yards, I don't think there is enough benefit on B.C. alone to justify the extra cost. The cost was, however, easily justified in accuracy gains. I now have a sub 1/2 MOA 338 LM.
FYI, I have no issues running these at magazine length with the GAP min spec chamber. My current OAL is 3.715" (jumped 0.015"), but recent testing seemed to show an improvement at 3.720". The 300 OTM's appeared to show less pressure and similar velocity compared to the SMK's with equal charges of H1000.
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