Hirtenberger 7.62x51FMJ (.308) any good for accuracy?

My views are that the Hirtenberger surplus is very consistent. COAL lengths are always the same. Bullet weights are always the same. It seems to shoot almost always the same. It is great stuff. It won't harm "target" barrels. My only gripe is the bullet weight is low. At 147gr, and the further you get out distance wise, the more it's affected by the wind. I've shot it out of everything from an M1A to my PGW Coyote to my Modern Hunter to my CZ hunting rifle to my custom BR with a Jury Custom barrel.

And you can't beat the price!!
 
6MT said:
At 147gr, and the further you get out distance wise, the more it's affected by the wind.
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That and M80's BC is nowhere near that of match bullets.

BC1: .393 @ 2800fps
BC2: .383 @ 2456fps
BC3: .378 @ 2010fps
BC4: .370 @ 1786fps
 
J996 said:
That and M80's BC is nowhere near that of match bullets.

BC1: .393 @ 2800fps
BC2: .383 @ 2456fps
BC3: .378 @ 2010fps
BC4: .370 @ 1786fps
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Yep, but it's great plinking ammo out to 800m at my range. A lot cheaper than match stuff. I don't use it all the time, but I do have loads of fun with it. I was actually surprised at the accuracy of it too.
 
This ammo is available from two different sponsors of CGN in 720 round cases, however one consists of three 240 round battle packs while the other consists pf two 360 battle packs. The first was manufactured in the late seventies while the later was made in the early eighties
 
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Keithjohn said:
I find 4 or 5 out of 20 way off . Bought 200 berdain primed , shot about 100 very good groups and then sparatic flyer
I put it down to old ammo
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Anyone else experience this? Shot this ammo today and was within 1.5" grouping at 100 and 200m. Then at 300m it opened up and 5 to 6" all over. Ammo was 83 and came in cardboard box with red stamp primer.
 
Question for those who have reloaded the Boxer stuff Compared to 308 win brass, how is Hirtenberger on case thickness. Are pressures and velocities way different?
 
I filled my case and compared to commercial ammo case and found around 2 grain less capacity in the mil surp cases so I worked up loads carefully
 
Thanks for the info... if max loads were found for each case, and a safe charge weight was used in each case, obviously the initial pressure in the mil surp case would be slightly higher, but would the muzzle velocities be pretty close to the same if the exact same charge load was used, or would the initial pressure differences cause a big change?

For example, data says 46 grains varget for 308 case, and after testing say 44 grains were safe in the milsurp case... if you put 44 grains in both cases, would the muzzle velocity be close or way off?
 
Accuracy of the 1983 boxer stuff is 1.5 moa.
Speed is between 2680 and 2730 from a 24" barrel
Brass is reloadable but soft
Surprisingly clean too
 
All told I bought 7 crates of the Hirt Surplus. 3 Crates Berdan, 4 crates Boxer.

I have just about exhausted my supply of the Berdan stuff, I have yet to crack a crate of the Boxer.

I was fairly disappointed with the ammo at first. 6" groups out of my Savage 10 TR. 5 to 10" groups out of 5 different M-14 Pattern rifles.

So I decided to pull some bullets and see what was going on. The first 40 rounds showed quite a bit of a spread in charge weights as well as projectile weights. So I pulled a total of 240 rounds, weighed the charges and projectiles.

The powder was a small spherical powder that meters quite well. I did not attempt to identify it.

Low 43.6
High 44.3
Average 44.115

ES 0.7
SD 0.12732582

The projectiles are FMJ with a steel core encapsulated in lead with a open base

Low 144.5
High 146.7
Average 146.0816667

ES 2.2
SD 0.40859066

Armed with this data I decided to do a ladder test with projectiles that weighed +or- .1gr. Charge weights for the ladders were 43.9, 44.0, 44.1 & 44.2 grs.

Post ladder test I settled on 44.1gr (the statistical average) and upon further testing I have settled on projectiles 146.0 +or- .6gr.

I got a bit lucky. All 3 crates of the Berdan primed ammo were marked with the same lot #. All testing was done with the first crate. I then pulled down the other 2 crates, with-out weighing charges. I have approximately 150 projectiles out of 1900 that were "culled".

The "Mexican Match" ammo I have now prepared post solid 10 shot groups in the 2" to 3" range in all "tuned" M-14 pattern rifles I have tried it in. I am down to my last 300 rnds of "MM" Berdan primed ammo. Once this ammo is exhausted, I will test out the Boxer ammo to see I go thorough this process all over again.

Cheers!
 






Powder is ball like a h335 or cfe223
Bullets are seated with a black glue in the case neck
I'm going to try to crimp a few and see if it improves accuracy
 
I crimped a handful of these rounds using a 308 seating die and got sub moa accuracy. They have never shot this good for me until now. I'm going to repeat the crimping with a bunch more and hopefully it continues.




 
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