wild_musk
Well-Known Member
I have a pair of AR308 rcvrs gathering dust, trying to determine what caliber I can build a light rifle that improves killing ability on whitetails over a 16-18" 308 at medium ranges. Based on reloading data from Hornady, no cartridge really improves on performance IMO. Lots of variants are optimized for long range efficiency, which means a longer barrel to realize the advantages. After many years of shooting 168-175g bullets through 16" AR308s at 2500fps, often less, I decided I was trying to make the rifle do more than it was meant for and switched to lighter weight bullets. Much happier now, no more lackluster killing performance. Subjective, I understand, shot placement and all the usual caveats, etc. For me, 130g bullets achieve right at 2900, and that hammers everything inside 300yd like a 270win. The rest of the stats are less interesting to me but here they are, supersonic to 770yd, 800ft_lb at 480yd...my load uses Barnes ttsx. They work good, near rifle performance from a carbine, good blood trails. 150g SST at 2660fps work well too. So I call these 500yd carbine rifles and generally carry different rifle if I want to shoot farther than 3-400yd, except for pigs. I know lots of people have different preferences, and I wanted to see what others would build. I've thought about 7mm-08, 270-08, 260, 6.5 Creed...none stick out to me (on paper) as much better, if any better at all (unless you tack on 4-8" of barrel length). Am I thinking wrong? Should I look to neck up instead? 338 or 375-08?
