BigBadPigg said:
I have been hunting with my .308 for 12 years now, my understanding with the hornady superformance brand ammo is that the powder being used is proprietary, but since your getting similar velocity with that powder , what length barrel are you using?
I've got two .308s. A Savage 11 and a Remington 700. Both have 22" barrels. Both of these rifles are sporter barrels, not specialized precision rifles. Plain-Jane hunting rifles. I've been playing with Alliant Power Pro 2000 MR in that cartridge. It's a spherical powder and the jug says that it's made in the USA. I suspect that it's made at St. Marks and is closely related to the Winchester brand of spherical powders. I've got a
full write-up at my blog and I'm getting some really interesting velocities from that powder. All my recipes come straight from the Alliant website, and I haven't gotten to the max load yet, although I've toyed with it. What's interesting to me is that I'm pushing a 150 grain bullet past 2950 fps with no pressure signs. The primers are still nicely radiused with no primer cratering. The bolt lift is normal.
If you look at Hornady's website, they're claiming 3000 fps from the 150 grain SST Superformance. I'm using the same bullet and my best speed so far is 2971 fps, and I'm not at what Alliant calls a max load. My barrel is a 22" sporter barrel.
If you google around, you'll find other folks saying that they're getting better than 2700 fps with 180 grain bullets.
I haven't tried that powder with 165/168 grain bullets yet. I've got four pounds of Reloder 15 that gives me excellent accuracy and that's probably the load I'm going to use for hunting this year.
But, that Power Pro 2000 deserves another look.