.308 155/168/175/195tmk ease/fickle

[sndmn11]

30-06 10 twist

I am curious if there is any trend with the .308 TMKs in one being consistently easy to reload or consistently fickle. I am not one who reloads for playing around and just seat bullets with the boat tail near the neck junction.

On paper, all four of these are similar inside 600yds, and I would imagine wound channels all are fine.

I have a few hundred Berger 180eh that are fine to reload and make over the top wounds, but rising in cost and their BC doesn't give me any advantages.


I have thought about 178eldx, but have never had great results with elds in other rifles.

 

[Hondo64d]

I’ve shot the 155s, 168s, and 175s out of my .308s. The 168s have been the best, the 155s the worse, but none have been bad. Even the 155s would give me a ten shot group of about 1MOA. I’ve used the 168s on coyotes, pigs, and a couple of Whitetails and they have performed very well. The 178gr ELD-Xs group nearly as well for me, and so far, work well on critters. I’ve only shot one pig, a decent sized boar at a little over 400 yards, and he was DRT.

I have to qualify all this by saying that all my .308 bolt gun barrels were chambered with a Bisley Palma reamer, which has a tighter freebore diameter than a SAAMI speck reamer. My experiences show that chambers cut with this reamer are much more forgiving in general than those cut with looser freebore.

John

168gr TMK at a little over 400 yards.



178gr ELD-x at a little over 400 yards.



10 168gr TMKs at 700 yards from my match rifle.

 

[sndmn11]

I’ve shot the 155s, 168s, and 175s out of my .308s. The 168s have been the best, the 155s the worse, but none have been bad. Even the 155s would give me a ten shot group of about 1MOA.



John

168gr TMK at a little over 400 yards



10 168gr TMKs at 700 yards from my match rifle.

I was hoping someone would tell me the 155s are too easy. Starting them at 3000+fps they beat all the others in retained velocity, trajectory, and drift out to 600.

168s are what I intended to buy before looking at numbers. Do you remember what your jump is/was?