.338 Lapua...worth the effort and cost?

[Choupique]

. A box of 50 Nosler partitions are like $85 now

They're at least $100 when I do find them for .338

Im on my last 15 accubonds. When I bought the rifle, 250gr partitions was the only thing I ever planned to shoot out of it. Getting close to 1000 rounds now and it has never seen a partition. Such are the times.

Sometimes you can find stuff for relatively cheap (.30c ea) but its a crapshoot. Not that any .338 rifle is cheap to start with, but feeding it for the life of the barrel will probably at least equal the price of the rifle by the time it's done. Big bores is rich man's stuff if you actually like to shoot it with full power stuff. Cast loads are about to be going through my .338 and .375 a whole lot more.

 

[Geewhiz]

They're at least $100 when I do find them for .338

Im on my last 15 accubonds. When I bought the rifle, 250gr partitions was the only thing I ever planned to shoot out of it. Getting close to 1000 rounds now and it has never seen a partition. Such are the times.

Sometimes you can find stuff for relatively cheap (.30c ea) but its a crapshoot. Not that any .338 rifle is cheap to start with, but feeding it for the life of the barrel will probably at least equal the price of the rifle by the time it's done. Big bores is rich man's stuff if you actually like to shoot it with full power stuff. Cast loads are about to be going through my .338 and .375 a whole lot more.

The last batch of 300 gr elite hunters I bought were $1.04/per bullet. Expensive but not as outrageous as they could be.

 

[waspocrew]

It's not too bad if you look around - picked up 500 ct of the 250 gr Norma GTX projectiles for $160 shipped. Tried them out and they shot great with RL-23. Picked up another 500 when they went on sale again a few months later.

Not sure if it's what I'll use for hunting, but they sure smack steel hard!

338 Cal 250gr HPBT GTX match bullets

Norma 338 Cal 250gr GTX HPBT

ravenrocksprecision.com

 

[sierracharlie338]

I had not considered the meat destruction. That's a good point

A good buddy shot a nice deer with a 338 Lapua (he was on hog patrol not expecting deer to come in). Don’t know for sure what bullet he was shooting but he double lunged the deer and it ran prob 70-100 yards. No meat damage that was any different than any of his other rifles. So it’s not an automatic explosion of blood shot meat like he expected. He was amazed the deer wasn’t blown in half I think lol.

 

[Choupique]

Ive shot about a dozen with bonded bullets from the win mag. Very little meat loss. Just a big hole straight through. Works great. Not popular opinion here but it's actually the best and most consistent performance ive ever had on whitetails. I always get exits, always have chunks of bone and lungs and stuff on the ground, never a big gooey mess like with the .270

I imagine the results with a match bullet would be a disgusting mess of hamburger meat and hair and guts everywhere. The winny is a good bit slower than the lapua, I image match bullets from that field artillery piece at close range would kill big stuff very dead with meat and innards scattered all over creation. Do not want.

 

[ChromeHound]

Anybody actually have experience shooting large bodied animals with the Norma GTX .338 bullets? They are on sale with free shipping right now and at .34¢ per bullet, it's very tempting. I am now kicking around taking 2 guns elk hunting. A .338 Lapua for when we are mostly glassing, fairly close to the quads and I won't be packing it all over creation. Then a smaller (6.5 PRC, .300WSM, 6.8 Western etc) to actually hike around with. The .338 would basically be for longer range opportunities that present themselves where stalking isn't an option.

 

[Wrench]

Anybody actually have experience shooting large bodied animals with the Norma GTX .338 bullets? They are on sale with free shipping right now and at .34¢ per bullet, it's very tempting. I am now kicking around taking 2 guns elk hunting. A .338 Lapua for when we are mostly glassing, fairly close to the quads and I won't be packing it all over creation. Then a smaller (6.5 PRC, .300WSM, 6.8 Western etc) to actually hike around with. The .338 would basically be for longer range opportunities that present themselves where stalking isn't an option.

I haven't killed a critter with the gtx....but I bought a thousand of them and they shoot well sub moa to a mile for me from an edge.

 

[ChromeHound]

I haven't killed a critter with the gtx....but I bought a thousand of them and they shoot well sub moa to a mile for me from an edge.

Yeah, I bought 500. At that price, I couldn't help myself

 

[waspocrew]

Yeah the price is great on the GTX. I remember reading a someone post their results with the 143 GTX out of a 6.5 PRC and it being less than desirable. I’ll use them for cheap practice and maybe send one through a deer eventually.