308- Range limitations of 150gr vs heavier bullets

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At what point do these stop performing? I have a bunch of hornady 150gr FMJBT and want something for 100-500ish yard practice on steel and targets.


In other words what range does the superior BC of the 168, 170grain bullets really pull ahead and the 150gr become a hassle?

Not looking for sub MOA at 400 but looking for decent enough(and economical enough) to develop my shooting skills.
 
In the fall I was hitting grapefruit sized rocks at 700 yds using piddly little 125gr Ballistic tips out of my 308. I don't think you will have any problems with 150gr bullets at the distances you want to shoot.

FWIW BC has little effect on accuracy. A high BC bullet is not going to be more accurate.
 
At what point do these stop performing? I have a bunch of hornady 150gr FMJBT and want something for 100-500ish yard practice on steel and targets.


In other words what range does the superior BC of the 168, 170grain bullets really pull ahead and the 150gr become a hassle?

Not looking for sub MOA at 400 but looking for decent enough(and economical enough) to develop my shooting skills.

155 gr in 308 Win is shot to 1000 yds in quite a few target disciplines. I have a couple of 308's that made the one mile mark. Bullets from 155 to 175 would be my choice for long range shooting.
 
Your Hornady 150FMJBTs are just fine for 100-500y plinking (and somewhat beyond that too).

Bullet shape matters even more than bullet weight. If you were shooting round-nose flat-base 180 grain hunting bullets, these would be substantially underperforming your 150 FMJBTs at 500y.

There's no clear cut-off line. High performance match bullets (your 150FMJBT is a 'medium performance' bullet) outfperform other bullets starting from the muzzle. However the amount of outperformance might not matter much in a number of applications. You can run the ballistics numbers yourself (I quite like the online "JBM calculator") and see what you're dealing with. When you're target shooting, whether it's formal target shooting or just fun plinking, bullet drop doesn't really matter. A better indicator of the amount of 'performance' your bullet is delivering is the amount of wind deflection that the bullet experiences.
 
If your rifle likes the 150 gr stick with them there are many 155gr target bullets that can get the job done ! My rifle likes the heavys 185 vld but I think it's just because they are long and sit closer to the rifling 2.90 coal one of these days I will try out the 155 Palma and see how it does
 
The 150s are fine to about 800 yards. After that you would need rediculously high pressures to remain hypersonic. If you want to make it to 1000 yards at hypersonic speeds then you need to look at bullets of 155 grains or heavier.

Having said that, you can squeeze a little more distance out of it if your barrel twist rate is faster. The whole idea is that bullet stability is dependent upon both spin rate and velocity. With lower velocity you need more spin to maintain acceptable stability. So if we accept that as true, it would be reasoanble to conclude that a rifle with a 1 in 10 twist would shoot accurately a little further than a rifle with a 1 in 13 twist.

Now that's not to say that we should all run out and buy some super fast twist barrel. There is a cost to spinning bullets faster and that is a reduction in accuracy. Basically an analogy might be that if you drive slowly with a tire that is out of balance you dont notice it, but as you drive faster the wheel starts to vibrate. The same goes for bullets, Spin them faster and the bullets need to be perfectly balanced or they bounce all over the place.

If you buy really great bullets, you may never notice problems.

The general rule is that best accuracy is achieved when you have just barely enough spin to stabalize the bullet, anything extra is your saftey margin for cold days and low temperatures.

Berger Bullets has a bullet stability calculator on thier web site that you might want to check out.
 
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