Hi. Im new here but have posted threads on this topic on a few occations on other forums.
My 2 cents.
Im from NZ. I hunt mainly red deer, which are medium sized deer I guess you could say.
Ive used mainly 130gn Noslers throughout BUT have tried some others. Ive shot a lot of deer btw.
Lately I have discovered the 110gn Barnes TSX. Havent given them a crack on deer yet but cant see any problems.
For what its worth you may be interested in the load I found.
Rifle is a .270WIN Browning LongTrac. Scope Swaro 3-12x50.
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57.5gn H4350. 0.050" off the lands. Thats a 3shot 1.1" group. If I can end up with a 5shot 1.5" group I will be more than happy.
Quite happy with this to start with.
The hotter loads @ 59.0 and 59.5 left extractor marks on the case head. Primers seemed a little too flat for my liking. They shot a bit bigger than this group also.
Case head of the 57.5gn load
I didn't go lower than 57.5gn. That was just a start figure I picked out of thin air. I will work on some between the 57.0 - 58.0gn range in .3gn segments. [ending 57.9gn]. Barnes reloading data suggests 56-59gn of this powder. So Im in the right area.
Considering I have never had any luck with Barnes before I consider this pretty good. Particularity out of a semi auto.
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I tried a few more 3 shot groups either side of the 57.5gn grouping which previously gave me the best group.
I found that there is a small sweet spot with these bullets. Is that a common theme? Lighter loads gave groups up to 4" (0.6gn less than the 57.5gn load).
There was another cluster of loads from 58.5-59.5 that all landed in the same area i.e the center of the groups was common. Group size in total was 1.7" for all 9 shots. That might be the optimum loading (59.0gn?).
For now, I will settle on 57.5gn. Shot another 1.1" group with this load to match the previous round.
FPS=3250fps. (my current fav load using 130gn Nosler BT does 2950,)
I am using a new scope which is taking some getting used to and shooting prone btw. The Swaro scope is nice for hunting but with the reticle in the first plane it doesnt make for an ideal target scope.
Pic of new rig
Ballistics chart of load below. (near enough anyway). My max range would be 300yds.
All that aside, I am happy with the results.It is a semi auto after all.