Until I convince my wife that I need another hobby (we have small children and less than no free time) I am at the mercy of factory ammo. I feel like I remember talk of a database on factory ammo and corresponding guns/cartridges. We recently won a Weatherby Vanguard in 6.5 PRC. Does anyone have experience before we go ammo-testing?
Thanks!
I haven’t tested that one specifically, but Norma Bondstrike in 6.5 PRC is a good starting place, as well as Barnes Harvest.
I agree with this, the Bondstrike shoots well in every gun and caliber I have. It’s a phenomenal bullet and can be found at a great price, online only usually. I’ve shot several deer with it, and it performs great. Check out rivertownmunitions.com
Do they sell the bullet? Id like to reload it. Factory Bondstrike shot well in my rifle.
I collected 6 different 6.5 prc box loads over the winter and got out to a test day at the range last week. Here is the setup.
Sako s20 w/ 24” barrel and Scythe TI surpressor.
100yrs with bipod and rear bag on a bench.
Athalon Rangecraft Cronograph
5 shot groups with 15min cooling between sets.
I ran all this data to figure out which hunting bullet i wanted to use for learning to hand load. The FPS calculations were just for curiosity, but interesting nonetheless. I know this isn’t a Weatherby, but maybe this gives you a spot to begin.
P.s. - The standard deviation on the Hornady load was awful.
Appreciate you posting that data.
Not to nit-pick but as a point of learning, with a single 5-shot group from each of those loads to base our conclusion on, you have an extremely low confidence interval.
Given the closeness of these accuracy results, it would probably take 6 - 8 groups of five from each load to say even with 90% confidence that you’d picked the right load.
That’s hundreds of shots, but otherwise if you shoot an insufficient number you’re just rolling the dice still because the sample size is too low. So then the whole process achieved nothing.
I’ve moved to a new way of doing load development where I pick the most likely load to succeed and really only test against one other variant to see if it’ll work. I shoot at a minimum 20 shots to see if either load will meet the standard.
Holy crap I was reading your 6.5 prc info and thought that Hornady MV looks very similar, so I looked up my info I that’s what my range raft came up with too for average fps- 2858. Except I’m averaging a 5 shot-5/8” group with my 24” Weatherby with a carbon fiber BSF barrel on the 307 alpine ct.- we must have the extract same lot # ammo
Yea, I know my CI needs to expand more. Since I was just looking to see which bullet my riffle likes for purposes of handloading, I was really only checking group size. I was recording the other data out of curiosity. With this last round of data compared to testing I did last summer, I know that my s20 is not ammo picky.
