Starter Ammo for .308

R

RadioDude

Inactive
I'm new to this forum and would like some information on starter ammo for my Rem. 700 .308. I have rifle & reloading experience with my M1 carbine & pistols for about 10 years. My main effort right now is to get on paper with good grouping of 1.5 to 2 MOA. at 100 yards.

I have 4 boxes of American Eagle 150gr FMJBT (AE308D)Red Box to start out with.

Any other suggestions on starter ammo? And ammo to stay away from?

Eventually I would like to get in to reloading .308, however that is for another posting.

Any information will help.

RD
 
The ammo you have is not half bad for how cheap it is, but its far from match ammo. out of groups of three at 100 I can usually get 2 holes touchingbut one of the three are almost always a flier. So I have had .6moa with it, but most the time its like 1.25 or so. Anyways, if you want good ammo just go straight to Federal Gold Medal Match 168 or 175. You don't need 175 unless you do 600+, so if you ever plan on doing it than you can just go with 175 just so you really learn the round and don't have to 'start over' on learning it. Either way though, FGMM is known to be the best factory load for 308 and you should have no problem doing .5-.75MOA with it, as long as your rifle and skill can do it.
 
I buy .308 Win from this outlet:

www.ammoman.com


There are lots of other sources, but this one has consistently worked well for me.

(I typically purchase the mil spec stuff rather than the Federal Match, but the Prvi Partizan stuff has shot pretty well in my rifle.)

Buy 500 rounds and when that's gone I suspect you'll be on paper. A Remington 700 should be able to produce 2 MOA with consistent ammunition (even if it isn't match), assuming the shooter does his job. In my experience, the ammunition I've received has been reasonably consistent despite not being match ammunition.

Best of luck with your rifle adventures!
 
What sub model of the popular Rem 700 do you have? There are so many out there. My suggestion is buy as many types of ammo you are able to get your hands on. Myself, I use Hornady Custom ammo 150 gr or 165 BTSP and Hornady SST Superformance in 150 or 165 gr. These shoot less than 1 moa in my Tikka T3 lite.
 
Hi. You really need to try a box of as many brands as you can to find the ammo your rifle shoots best. The price of it means nothing.
American Eagle is Federal's low end ammo. Ok for shooting to gather brass, but it's not really made for target accuracy and the FMJ isn't for hunting anything but varmints. Their 168 grain Gold Medal ammo will be better for target shooting. Uses a Sierra Matchking. Mind you, a great deal depends on what you plan on doing with your rifle.
I'm guessing you have it scoped. Did you bore sight it? That will put you on paper.
 
I would suggest that you also try some 168 grain and some 175 grain ammos.

Most .308s I have or know of like 168 grain Sierra Match Kings and shot them under 0.75 inches.

My .308 loved factory 168 SMKs from Federal and Black Hills but didn't seem to like 150 grain factory ammo.

I started to hand load 168 grain SMKs and got even better results with hand loads averaging under 0.6 inches with favorite loads.
Then I loaded some 150 grain SMKs and found that my .308 shot those loads as good as or even better than my best 168 grain loads.

It likes 175 grain hand loads but didn't shoot the factory ammo very well.

What I found is that my rifle really shoots well in the 2625 to 2675 fps range with 168 grain bullets. That happens to match up well with Federal and Black Hills factory SMK loads.

Most of the 150 and 175 grain loads are loaded faster than my rifle likes so the accuracy suffers.

Unfortunately, knowing how my rifle shoots doesn't do you much good, because you're going to find that your rifle is going like different loads.

I don't think there is any really easy way to pick what your rifle might like without having a bit of shooting data to start with.
Keep good records of what you shoot and measure everything until you begin to see a pattern.

If you don't like record keeping, you'll be stuck with listening to opinions and trying to figure out whether your rifle might like what someone else's rifle loves.
 
If were talking factory match ammo, FGMM, Black hills, and Southwest ammo are my picks. Especially southwest ammo. Southwest has a Run N Gun line for in a sense "cheap" match ammo. If your not into reloading and want the next best thing southwest is it IMO. Their premium match 175gr SMKs are loaded in lapua brass and their standard are loaded in winchester. The Run N gun are manufactured with the same loading process but on once fired LC brass. But their 16$ a box.

http://www.southwestammunition.com/product_p/308175smk-rng.htm

And here is a 550yd group shot by Frank Galli:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcCyVcIQLeQ&feature=player_embedded

And more videos:
http://www.southwestammunition.com/Articles.asp?ID=243
 
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