this is going to be long... and if I mis-state anything please feel free to correct it.
My suggestion would be to tune your load for your rifle. I don't know where you are in your reloading journey so it's hard to make recommendations. A lot of things affect accuracy. Powder choice and load, bullet choice and seating depth, etc.
There is at least one article on this site that covers
load tuning. I went through a similar process to the one that I just linked to when I started tuning up my VTR in .308. Ultimately I ended up shooting a 1.35" group at 300 yards (two of the three bullets holes were touching).
Step one (for me), after 200 yard zero, was to find a load and seating depth that my barrel liked. I started with seating depth. I'm not saying that I started in the right place btw. It's just how I did it.
I picked a mid-velocity load for the bullet that I was using and one powder. I adjusted seating depth and loaded 6 rounds for each of the 4 seating depths that I tried. My choices were .010 off of the land, .050 off of the lands, .090 off of the lands, and .135 off of the lands. FYI, in this rifle, factory 150 gr ammo was significantly farther off of the lands than .135. Someone linked the procedure for this to me but I haven't been able to find it. This is the course seating depth adjustment method. I plan to fine tune the seating depth now that I know where the sweet spot roughly lies.
I fired a 200 yard, 3 shot group, waiting for the barrel to cool between groups. I killed some time by walking down to the target and color coding the holes for each group so that I didn't mix anything up. I started at .135, looking for signs of pressure problems, worked my way up to .010, firing 3 shot groups from each seating depth. I started back again at .135 until all 24 rounds were converted to holes and empty brass. The results were pretty obvious by the end of the first groups fired. .135 in my VTR was pathetic (factory ammo was worse) and group size decreased drastically as I moved toward .010. When testing was complete, .010 was the best choice so that's what I selected. Note: for my VTR the round was too long to load in a magazine so I single shot load these.
I'm a powder junkie so I had 3 different powders to play with. At the time of my testing I had only established a good seating depth for the 150 gr. Sierra ProHunter bullet so that simplified things a little.
I loaded 9 rounds for each powder for a total of 27 rounds. I took loads right out of the Sierra manual for 2,500 fps, 2,600 fps, and 2,700 fps for each of the three powders that I had. Actually... I had to buy a pound of one of the powders that I used
It turned out to be the one that worked the best. My selection process for the third powder was a little unscientific. The Sierra manual said that for my combo 43.1gr of Viht N140 was the most accurate load. I didn't have any Viht N140 so I looked for something with the same charge for the same velocity. The closest thing to it was 43.4 gr of RE15. In truth, I made a list of the powders that fell close to Viht N140 at the velocity that was listed as most accurate and bought what I could find at the "local" reloading supply. It turned out that they only had RE15 which was the closest thing to VihtN140 by the numbers. If they had had Viht N140 that's what I would have bought.
I shot a sighter at 300 to make sure everything was going to land on paper. I actually loaded an extra round at the lowest powder charge to use as a sighter. At this point I did not want to get into adjusting the scope to make it hit the 10 ring at 300 yards. All I needed was to see that the lowest velocity load would hit the paper.
I held on the center for every shot and I fired a 3 shot group starting from the slowest (FPS) load and looking for pressure problems. I left the bolt open and walked down to the target and color coded the holes. There's an article linked on this site somewhere that talks about marking the bullet with colored Sharpies and letting it mark the paper for you. Try a search for ladder testing. That might be get you the link. I may try that next time.
After letting the barrel cool (the VTR does seem to cool quickly and more quickly if the bolt is left open) I fired another 3 shot group from the next fastest powder. Repeat... shoot the last 3 shot group from the fastest powder. Again, the first round of testing gave me what I wanted to know. The best groups came from the RE-15 at 2600 fps (1.35" at 300) though RE-15 at 2700 fps wasn't much worse.
One note: During my hunt in early December I shot a doe at 285 yards on the last day. Not because I wanted to... the big, older does were smart this year. They would only come out when shooting light was low or in this case when they were out of "normal" range for the stand I was shooting off of. I wasn't worried about making the shot. I put a lot of range time in at 200 and 300 yards this year. I hit her higher in the shoulder (but toward the rear) than I would have liked but she was down withing 10 yards so I'm not complaining. The bullet did it's job but it did not pass through her. My initial thought was that a 150 gr bullet and the load that I chose might not be enough for the distance and animal that that I shot but looking at Loadbase it should be carrying over 1700 ft/#'s of energy at 285 yards. Not to mention the fact that the animal died quickly. I'm guessing that it hit a lot of bone. On this particular hunt we didn't have to clean the animals, someone else did. I normally try to be there when they clean but it was the last day and I hadn't shot out so they put me on another stand right away. I forgot to ask them to check the damage for me... They think that I'm nuts anyway... I usually carry a rifle and an 800mm lens on a camera when I hunt so I get to shoot them twice
