TexasPatriot.308
Member
I'd say my favorite, the .308, but the 7mm-08 does an amazing job and I love this round too.
Best round for 200+ Yd shooting.
- Thread starter CoyoteSix
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vaupet
Member
6,5x55 of course
Where is kachok when you need him?
Where is kachok when you need him?
In the second post
dubbleA
Member
Kackok said:
In the San Antonio area as of yesterday Feb 8,2013 Walmarts had plenty of .223 Rem ammo. The lower priced stuff was a whooping $7.97. Area Academy's also have plenty of .223 but limit the amount you can purchase.
I would bet your whatever you want, truck, gun collection, gold, cash, house that I could walk into anyone of the 50+ area wallyworlds and pick up more 223 ammo in a variety of brands/loads and cheaper than 6.5x55 any day week period.
Not that the 6.5x55 is a bad round it's just not as popular and available as the 223 and never will be. Yes the dimunutive 223 will do everything the OP listed and it will do it cheaper with either factory or handloaded ammo.
I just bought some quality .223 Wednesday at a LGS. I don't buy the cheap stuff because I'm not into spraying lead unless it's really cheap (like 7.62 x 39 or cheaper when it is cheap). I stay stocked up because I learned my lesson 4 years ago. I bought plenty while the price was low. But I see .223 ammo that's no more expensive than it was a year ago. You just have to look in the right places.
K-D-D;
Here's another very enthusiastic vote for the 6.5 X 55mm Swedish Mauser. The round has won 1000 yard Palma competitions, and is known for not only it's stellar accuracy, but modest recoil as well. Recoil is a serious factor when shooting long strings at extreme distances.
The cartridge is easy to reload for and will return good load development with outstanding accuracy. If you get a mil-surp gun, just check the stock disc & have someone interpret it for you if necessary. Ammo is not hard to find, even these days, and the cost is reasonable. But, if you handload your own, you may find that steel to be waaay too easy.
900F
Here's another very enthusiastic vote for the 6.5 X 55mm Swedish Mauser. The round has won 1000 yard Palma competitions, and is known for not only it's stellar accuracy, but modest recoil as well. Recoil is a serious factor when shooting long strings at extreme distances.
The cartridge is easy to reload for and will return good load development with outstanding accuracy. If you get a mil-surp gun, just check the stock disc & have someone interpret it for you if necessary. Ammo is not hard to find, even these days, and the cost is reasonable. But, if you handload your own, you may find that steel to be waaay too easy.
900F
rodregier
Member
If you want to obscure, 222 Remington should do the trick. It set benchrest records in the past, so it's certainly accurate enough.
K-D-D;
Uh, a typical 170 grain bullet has the ballistic coefficient of a brick and the trajectory of a rainbow. It'll leave the muzzle at something around 1900 fps with a B/C of well under .2. That means at 300 yards it might be doin' 1000 fps & might have 400 ft. lbs. of energy. Numbers that really aren't fair to a game animal. Particularly when there are much better choices available for hunting at that kind of range.
Let's contrast the above with my fav load for the 6.5 Swede in a modern action. Muzzle velocity is 2700 fps & energy is 2266 ft lbs. At 300 yards velocity is 2200 & energy is still over 1500. B/C on that bullet is .520. Or, the .30-06: MV 2900 fps at 2800 energy
& 300 velocity is 2150, energy 1540 & B/C is .349.
The flatter shooting Swede & ought-6 retain enough energy to cleanly kill medium sized game animals at that range. A good rule of thumb is to be able to put a thousand pounds of energy on the target. Another factor is the mid-range trajectory of the bullet you're shooting. Both the ought-6 & the Swede are much flatter shooting than the thutty-thutty, and therefore it's easier to hit what your shooting at when you don't know the exact range.
900F
Uh, a typical 170 grain bullet has the ballistic coefficient of a brick and the trajectory of a rainbow. It'll leave the muzzle at something around 1900 fps with a B/C of well under .2. That means at 300 yards it might be doin' 1000 fps & might have 400 ft. lbs. of energy. Numbers that really aren't fair to a game animal. Particularly when there are much better choices available for hunting at that kind of range.
Let's contrast the above with my fav load for the 6.5 Swede in a modern action. Muzzle velocity is 2700 fps & energy is 2266 ft lbs. At 300 yards velocity is 2200 & energy is still over 1500. B/C on that bullet is .520. Or, the .30-06: MV 2900 fps at 2800 energy
& 300 velocity is 2150, energy 1540 & B/C is .349.
The flatter shooting Swede & ought-6 retain enough energy to cleanly kill medium sized game animals at that range. A good rule of thumb is to be able to put a thousand pounds of energy on the target. Another factor is the mid-range trajectory of the bullet you're shooting. Both the ought-6 & the Swede are much flatter shooting than the thutty-thutty, and therefore it's easier to hit what your shooting at when you don't know the exact range.
900F
Nwflycaster
Member
If you're talking single shot bolt action and not looking for across the coarse type of shooting, you would be hard pressed to find anything better than a 6BR for 200 - 600 yard shooting.
PaperPlateTargets
Member
I might of missed it in the replies above, but I loved my 22-250 and I didn't see it mentioned. Now I'm curious. Bad round?
22-250 a bad round? No frigging way.
Bullets are cheap, so it's economical. You go through powder a little faster than 223, but the powder isn't the most expensive component so the effect this has on your cost per round is fairly insignificant.
If you are BUYING ammo it's gonna be costly, but that's true of any accurate, match grade rifle round, so an irrelevant point.
As far as accuracy?
The very FIRST time my wife shot a rifle, I set her down with an off-the-shelf, unmodified Savage 112 in 22-250. It came from the factory with a heavy, weighted stock, very stable. The only thing I did to the gun was put nice glass on it (Leupold VariX Mk3).
Her first 5 shot group that she'd ever fired, I could cover with a dime at 125 yards.
In fact, we made a game out of it, and I started taping dimes up on the target. She got so bored with shooting bullseyes that we started shooting currency instead. She handed a bunch of dimes and quarters out to her friends, later as souvenirs. She was able to place the round close enough to the edge - on demand - to use them for keychains.
And that was her first day ever holding a rifle.
I shot one-hole groups with it all day long at 100 yards. So can she, now.
She still has several of those coins, 12 years later, on her truck's keychain.
22-250 is NOT going to disappoint you, accuracy wise.
Bullets are cheap, so it's economical. You go through powder a little faster than 223, but the powder isn't the most expensive component so the effect this has on your cost per round is fairly insignificant.
If you are BUYING ammo it's gonna be costly, but that's true of any accurate, match grade rifle round, so an irrelevant point.
As far as accuracy?
The very FIRST time my wife shot a rifle, I set her down with an off-the-shelf, unmodified Savage 112 in 22-250. It came from the factory with a heavy, weighted stock, very stable. The only thing I did to the gun was put nice glass on it (Leupold VariX Mk3).
Her first 5 shot group that she'd ever fired, I could cover with a dime at 125 yards.
In fact, we made a game out of it, and I started taping dimes up on the target. She got so bored with shooting bullseyes that we started shooting currency instead. She handed a bunch of dimes and quarters out to her friends, later as souvenirs. She was able to place the round close enough to the edge - on demand - to use them for keychains.
And that was her first day ever holding a rifle.
I shot one-hole groups with it all day long at 100 yards. So can she, now.
She still has several of those coins, 12 years later, on her truck's keychain.
22-250 is NOT going to disappoint you, accuracy wise.
savanahsdad
Member
great round , that's on my short list right next to a 243win, I was thinking about getting a 22-250 AR uper , thinking that would be a blast !
Well, there's a drawback to 22-250 (and I imagine the 6mm benchrest cartridges suffer the same problem)...
They get mighty boring to shoot if you can't stretch them out.
I mean, the first time you put a 10 round group together at 100 yards that's one hole (or a ragged hole at 200), it's really cool.
But the 10th time? The 20th time? You start reaching. I was shooting pez, pennies, dimes, change, putting a bullet through each of the marks on a #10 playing card, I even shot a match in half did the same with a playing card lengthwise at 100 yards.
But it gets boring, after you run out of ideas on "little things to shoot". Golf balls at 300 yards in high wind are still fun, but my current range doesn't let me shoot anything that isn't stapled to the target stand.
So I haven't got the rifle out in a long time, to shoot it. Just "ran out of ideas."
However, one thing I will say - learning to shoot, and shoot well, off of a rifle like that, will transfer experience that is LASTING. If that rifle doesn't hit dead center (it really shoots like a laser beam), then YOU did something wrong.
So I really mastered all of the fundamentals on it. Breath control, hold, parallax, reading the wind (when there is markers), etc.
Buying a rifle with a cartridge as inherently accurate as the 22-250 or one of the 6mm benchrest variants is probably the best thing you could ever do, if you want to become a skilled rifleman. Because it removes ALL doubt about whether it's YOU, or the RIFLE.
That lets you focus on YOU.
But, after at time, shooting lasers gets boring.
They get mighty boring to shoot if you can't stretch them out.
I mean, the first time you put a 10 round group together at 100 yards that's one hole (or a ragged hole at 200), it's really cool.
But the 10th time? The 20th time? You start reaching. I was shooting pez, pennies, dimes, change, putting a bullet through each of the marks on a #10 playing card, I even shot a match in half did the same with a playing card lengthwise at 100 yards.
But it gets boring, after you run out of ideas on "little things to shoot". Golf balls at 300 yards in high wind are still fun, but my current range doesn't let me shoot anything that isn't stapled to the target stand.
So I haven't got the rifle out in a long time, to shoot it. Just "ran out of ideas."
However, one thing I will say - learning to shoot, and shoot well, off of a rifle like that, will transfer experience that is LASTING. If that rifle doesn't hit dead center (it really shoots like a laser beam), then YOU did something wrong.
So I really mastered all of the fundamentals on it. Breath control, hold, parallax, reading the wind (when there is markers), etc.
Buying a rifle with a cartridge as inherently accurate as the 22-250 or one of the 6mm benchrest variants is probably the best thing you could ever do, if you want to become a skilled rifleman. Because it removes ALL doubt about whether it's YOU, or the RIFLE.
That lets you focus on YOU.
But, after at time, shooting lasers gets boring.
He doesn't want to shoot game. He wants to shoot steel. He doesn't want to put holes in it. He just wants to hit it. For that (and lots of different varmints) a .223 is plenty good out to 500 yards. It gets pretty anemic after that but you can still hit the targets. It just won't be easy to tell that you hit it.
I've never had a problem hearing 223 hit anything metal at a quarter mile. And we've shot at everything ranging from steel poppers to cars to (full) propane cans to beer kegs to washers and dryers and other stuff I'm not allowed to talk about until the statute of limitations expires....
The problem with 223 at longer ranges, is it starts falling like a rock. It is also REALLY twitchy in wind.
But competition shooters still manage (and manage very well, to my admiration) to fire AR's on target out to 600 with sufficient accuracy that *I* wouldn't want to be in their sights.
22-250 is a little better in this regards too. When you're lobbing a projectile out at 4,000fps, wind has less time to act on it, as does gravity. It flies flatter, gets there faster, it has reduced wind drift due to speed, and arrives with a heck of a LOT more attitude.
The problem with 223 at longer ranges, is it starts falling like a rock. It is also REALLY twitchy in wind.
But competition shooters still manage (and manage very well, to my admiration) to fire AR's on target out to 600 with sufficient accuracy that *I* wouldn't want to be in their sights.
22-250 is a little better in this regards too. When you're lobbing a projectile out at 4,000fps, wind has less time to act on it, as does gravity. It flies flatter, gets there faster, it has reduced wind drift due to speed, and arrives with a heck of a LOT more attitude.
I'd say go with the 30/06 too. I shoot 7.62x54r but until someone starts making aftermarket barrels for them finding a tight one is tough. It' s worth the chase though if you do. Just got 880 rounds last week for $190 including shipping. That's the up side to the old Mosin. But I've always wanted to go the other way and shoot .204. Who doesn't want to see 4000 fps?
But if you are looking for cheap the Mosin fits the bill. Mine is a little under 2Moa. Not exactly a tack driver but plenty accurate for 300 yards on bigger game. I've shot steel with it past 400. And then there's that new stock coming soon that makes it removable mag fed....
But if you are looking for cheap the Mosin fits the bill. Mine is a little under 2Moa. Not exactly a tack driver but plenty accurate for 300 yards on bigger game. I've shot steel with it past 400. And then there's that new stock coming soon that makes it removable mag fed....
Centurian22
Member
Tech, please tell where did you get 880rds for $190 shipped?!?!? I would jump on that in a second if its still in stock! Thanks.
coloradokevin
Member
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There are a lot of choices for the distances you're looking to shoot. Although the .260 Remington and 6.5 Creedmoor are getting quite popular for longer ranges (better ballistics than .308 Win), the .308 Win is still well within its element at the distances you're talking about shooting.
Here's why I suggest the .308 Win:
1) It's an easy cartridge to find anywhere, there are lots of components available, and lots of recipes for loads that work with many rifles have already been worked out.
2) Barrel life is great with the .308 Win
3) The .308 Win is fairly suitable for hunting most game.
Here's why I suggest the .308 Win:
1) It's an easy cartridge to find anywhere, there are lots of components available, and lots of recipes for loads that work with many rifles have already been worked out.
2) Barrel life is great with the .308 Win
3) The .308 Win is fairly suitable for hunting most game.
savanahsdad
Member
don't forget."if it takes you 5 shots to hit your target then the price go's up",Maybe I should've named this "Economical round for 200-300yd shooting"!
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