Bullet Stability ... Need help

[FEENIX]

Hello everyone - I've discovered I have purchased the wrong barrel for my custom 300 win mag, 10 years ago.

The gun has grouped well and I've filled tags at long range with the gun but I've also had some funky random results as well. Well... after 20 years of reloading and long range shooting I learned about bullet stability with rifle twists in detail. I always knew of the basics but I was shown the calculator on Bergers site yesterday.

After a day of piling in and running data, I'm finding that the 26" - 1/11" twist barrel on my 300 win mag wasn't a great choice for long heavy bullets.

My current load is with a 210 Berger at 2840 and according to that calculator, I'm right on the edge of stability. I'm using 500ft, 20 degrees as my baseline worst-case environment to trust the gun.

So instead of getting more frustrated, I wanted to put this in front of all of you and see what information and advice you would be able to apply to this situation. My goal was to try a few new bullets this year, the big ELD X's, a 200gr Accubond, etc.. for a do-all deer/elk load. After running that calculator for stability, the bullets below are what I'm showing I need to pick from:

180 Accubond
200 Sierra Gameking
190 Berger VLD
200 Nosler Partition

Thank you in advance. I'm happy to listen to everything you've learned. I'd rather lean on humility and do this right.

I harvested a MT bull elk with 190 Berger VLD at 931 yards out of my SAKO M995 in .300 WM 24" 1:11" MV is 3043 FPS with H4831SC. Range altitude is 3300', elk hunting altitude is 5-7000' or so.

Good luck and happy safe shooting/hunting.

 

[Magnum61]

I harvested a MT bull elk with 190 Berger VLD at 931 yards out of my SAKO M995 in .300 WM 24" 1:11" MV is 3043 FPS with H4831SC. Range altitude is 3300', elk hunting altitude is 5-7000' or so.

Good luck and happy safe shooting/hunting.

Great performance and thank you for sharing that.

I'm finding that using the JBM calc and adding the plastic tip measurements I was given from the manufacturers has changed the numbers for the better. It was actually a gentleman at Nosler who suggested I run the JBM calc and to make sure the tip measurement was included.

Including the plastic tip measurement has brought the 200 Accubond and the 200 ELD-X above 1.5sg in worst case scenarios.