Big old RN rifle bullets

L

ligonierbill

New member
Like most folks, I'm always looking at ballistic coefficients to get the most effective range out of my rifles. Less concerned with "flat" shooting with a laser rangefinder in my pocket, but I always want to see how much energy they can carry downrange.

But recently, I've been working with heavy round nosed bullets. I started with some 160s in 6.5x55, just because I have to try everything in that versatile round. They do OK, but the one that is impressing me is the 220 gr Sierra Pro Hunter in 30-06. I picked up an old sporter Remington-made Model of 1917 last year. It has aperture sights, which I do not intend to change, and that limits these old eyes to about 200 yards. Well, working up with IMR-4350, these lumps go just over 2,400 out of a 23" barrel and are pretty accurate. (Note that this is a "fast" rifle. It tends to run considerably faster than my other '06 with the same load.) If you run those numbers through a ballistic calculator, you're not giving up much to a sleek long range bullet until you pass 300.

There's an old study somewhere that says this setup is the ticket for big bears. I'd choose a bigger caliber, but I can see the virtue. And just to show he wasn't always right, Elmer Keith concluded the '06 is "no elk rifle" after shooting a north bound elk in the south end with a 220. He expected it to go through the critter from end to end, which it did not. Me, I'm going to load some 180 Pro Hunter RN at 2,700 and take my old Enfield deer hunting.

The other big bullets I have just started fooling with are a couple 286 gr 9.3x62 loads. This round is often compared to the .338 WM, but they're very different. Many, me included, love the ability of the .338 to send a ton of energy a very long way. (See my first paragraph.) The old Mauser round goes bigger, slower. It looks to be a hammer out to 300, maybe 350, but beyond that, a big .338 GameKing leaves it. (Too bad Sierra doesn't make a 9.3.) But I'm getting older and slower, so maybe my rifles should match.

Anyone have field experience with bigger, slower, round nosed bullets? If not, I know you all have opinions.
 
I've used a Hornady 154gr RN in my 7mm Rem Mag before on deer. Worked great. Mainly did, well because I could. Lol. It's a nice easy shooting soft load for a 7mm RM.


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If you play with ballistic calculators, you'll also find the round nose's drag coefficients are a closer match to a G1 reference projectile's than any of the spitzer nose bullets are. So if you decide to try lobbing those things a long distance the G1 BC won't go too far wrong.
 
About 25 years ago I bought an old 7mm rolling block. It was poor example; cruddy wood, rear sight gone, rifling washed out at the muzzle, pitting on the action, etc. What it was however was 'cheap'. So me & a gunsmith I was helping occasionally, just for the experience, proceeded to commit various acts of sacrilege on it. We cut the barrel even with the forend, recrowned it, built a front ramp & ran a ball mill across the bottom of a parts-drawer Williams 5D, to match the receiver ring.

About that same time a local bait shop/ammo store was going out of business and I bought all 13 boxes of Privi Partizan 7mm Mauser ammo they had in stock. This was the 175 grain jacketed roundnose load with a dead-soft core. The old RRB zeroed with it just fine and with fresh rifling at the muzzle, kept it well under 2 MOA. Once I figured out it would shoot, I hung a sling on it & dragged that old rifle all over for the next five years and hardly ever shot it unless it was turned on fur. Those Privi 175's were outrageous killers and just wrecked coyotes, groundhogs etc. I also used it to make the best running deer shot of my life.

Along toward the last box of bait-shop ammo, she got to puncturing primers & leaking gas badly around the firing pin. After a couple of face-fulls of hot gas I sent it on to another gunsmith, who had big plans to bush the firing pin & rebarrel it, etc. A few years ago I saw it sitting in a shop in Independence MO, in the same condition as when I sold it. It brought back a lot of happy memories.

I've loaded the '06 for decades and while I've been tempted by that 220 SP Sierra, but never tried it. As long as it has a good soft core, I would expect results like I was getting in the 7x57.
 
You will see that the current crop of patent bullets are all spitzers with various gimmicks to control expansion.

A plain heavy roundnose softpoint has enough lead exposed - Taylor's "blue nose" - to insure expansion and a long shank to drive it through.
 
I have used the hornady 220 rn interlock in my .300 win mag with surprising results. MV would have been about 2600-2700 fps. I hit a quartering away whitetail buck (running, not from me, chasing a doe) from a distance of about 60 yards. The buck dropped like a bag of hammers, fastest anchor I've ever seen for not hitting any bones, no surprise there. But upon dressing the animal out I discovered that the bullet had broke into 2 pieces at the cannelure early on, both of these pieces traversed the entire chest cavity and stopped against the shoulder, not breaking it. The hornady bullet is softer than the Sierra according to numerous sources. I agree with what Watson says...the round noses don't retain velocity well but they don't need anywhere near as much of it to expand reliably. The wide frontal area and exposed lead ensure an emphatic energy transfer even at velocities that a spitzer would fail at. This is why the .30-30 has demonstrated itself to have killing power all out of proportion to its paper ballistics imho.
 
I was using 160 Grain Sierra semi-pointed in my 6.5 Swede. I have not been able to get them or another heavy 6.5 for a while. They may be available again. I use 117 Grain Hornady .250 RN in my Savage. I sold the .257 Roberts. I had issues with these bullets opening up at close range with the Roberts. I have used 220 grain Sierra in the 98 Mauser I had. What a deer stopper. The availability of RN bullets is really not to good anymore. I really do not care for spitzers in a lot of my rifles.
 
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