Anyone use optimus 153g or 135g sierra varmint in 308s

[Medic]

Hey,
just wondering if anyone uses 153grain optimus projectiles for hunting (10's of thousands apparently go to the NT each year and kill everything) or what are your stories with the Sierra 135grain Varmint projectiles available in bulk at the moment with 308?
I'm working a 308 load for broad use.
Cheers all.
Just wanna get some experiences, I'm waiting on a the reloaders haven guy to fix up his press to keep making the 140 grain Varmint R but his press is broken for the short term, but i'm outta here on the 12th so gotta get something now.
Cheers.

[scotty87]

I've been running the Sierra varmint 135gr hollow point for a while now but have not shot any game with them.

I load 48.5gr of AR2208 in Remington cases, 2.630 OAL. Shoots about 1" at 100m with usually 3 shots out of 5 touching. Am going to pick up a bulk pack of these projies soon as it's become my favourite round through my howa. A poster on another forum vouched that they performed well on medium sized pigs and goats, puts em down easy.

If you want to try out the projectile OSA do a factory load using it which is pretty affordable usually under $30 for 20 rounds. OSA brass is pretty good quality too but doesn't hold as much powder as my Remington cases.

[Medic]

Cheers scotty, I also have a howa 1500.

I'm looking at offerings from reloaders haven and he also makes a 140 grain varmint from 9mm cases for a good price (out of stock) but also sells http://reloadershaven.com.au/item.php?id=342 153 grain HPBT that apparently do well hunting according to the manufacturer???
But i've had "Interesting results" with HPBT match ammo branded as "Hunting ammo" in the past... some of it not good. So I'm a bit shy, but open to it.
Has anyone used that 153grain stuff?

Unfortunately I'll only get a 1 chance at ranging before leaving so i'm stuck with whatever i'll get.
He has some interesting self-made offerings in 22 caliber as well. Was gonna try a few for fun.

Anyone use any of his custom/swaged stuff? I'm keen to try it. I know a few swagers and they rave about how good their bullets perform.

[Monty]

i've had "Interesting results" with HPBT match ammo branded as "Hunting ammo" in the past... some of it not good. So I'm a bit shy

And rightly so.

If you're talking about varminting with a .308 and 150gr loads I think most will agree any projectile will do the trick. There is just such an excess of energy in play for the small size of the target animal it as near as makes no difference.

If you're talking about hunting medium and large game though you'd really need to know more about the projectile to judge it's suitability than just the fact that it's a HPBT.

A boat tail design is to increase the ballistic coefficient of a projectile.

A hollow point can be utilised to promote expansion in the case of a hunting bullet. In the case of match bullets the meplat can be manipulated depending on what attribute they're seeking to improve, resulting in a hollowpoint, but with no consideration given to expansion after the impact.

Neither feature is inherently bad for hunting.

Sectional density, jacket thickness, bonding etc. are all more important than either being a HP or BT alone.

Sierra for example make their GameKing which is a renowed hunting projectile, and their MatchKing bullet which they themselves say is not suitable for hunting. Both are HPBT's.

See the cross section picture below, MatchKings on the left, GameKings on the right (credit to sadefensejournal for the picture).

sierra.jpg

You can see the jacket, ogive and aperture are all significantly different despite both being "HPBT" by the same bullet maker.

This is a general statement based on a few assumptions, but if a manufacturer was relabelling what was clearly purpose designed match ammo as hunting ammo suitable for game species (as you've implied above?) chances are it's far from ideal for consistent, ethical hunting of that kind.