A friend and I were recently discussing the lethality effects of bullets on game at distance. He has the opportunity to hunt in a great location this year with the possibility to take game out to 800 yards(he is a capable shooter to 1200 yards, before the ethics card gets thrown). The only rifles he has available to him are a 6.5 Creedmoor custom rifle, a 6.5 Grendel AR, a couple of AR15's and a Sig SHR970 in 30-06.
I was of the belief that the 6.5 Creedmoor probably only had a max effective range of 400 yards and the 30-06 out to 600. He had already decided he was going to roll with is 30-06 as the best choice for effectively taking game out to its max range.
A few days go by and I am consulting my bed side bible, Applied Ballistics for Long Range Shooting and come across the Matunas' Optimal Game Weight formula. So I start running numbers for the 30-06 tossing the 208 AMAX downrange at 2600fps. Low and behold that could make for a lethal combination on game out to 1050 yards on 180# game animals.
So it was off to the range to develop a load using the 208 AMAX. RL17 was our powder of choice. The Sig rifle has a hammer forged, 4 groove, 1/10 twist 22" barrel so we were good to go there.
I loaded up two ladders starting from 52-56.5 grains. One load with CCI 200 primers and the other with Federal 210M's.
Both shot well. The nodes were easily apparent so we chose 55.5grains which yielded 2710fps average over my M2 Chrono with IR screens. The 5 shot group turned in a .898" 5 shot group at 100. Couldn't be happier.
So now armed with real world load data and accuracy capability it looks as if this load will be sufficient to take 180# game at a distance of 1125 yards. So considering that max shot would be 800 yards, this load is capable of taking game up to 343# at 800 yards. Still retaining 1403 ft. lbs. of energy.
The OGW formula is as follows as according to Bryan's Second Edition book: <span style="font-size: 14pt">V³W² × 1.5 × 10¯¹²</span>
e.g. 1410^3*208^2*1.5*10^-12= 181.92#'s
The formula calculates for energy at the muzzle. By using your ballistic program, you have to calculate the downrange velocity to calculate the max game weight that the projectile is capable of lethally taking effectively.
This could be interesting for 308 as well shooting this bullet.
Just wanted to share as I found this information interesting and useful for my application. Thank you Bryan!
While I know this is not exact science it does provide data for a starting point. REal world field data is where the truth will lie, and this will be put to the test in about 3 months.
I was of the belief that the 6.5 Creedmoor probably only had a max effective range of 400 yards and the 30-06 out to 600. He had already decided he was going to roll with is 30-06 as the best choice for effectively taking game out to its max range.
A few days go by and I am consulting my bed side bible, Applied Ballistics for Long Range Shooting and come across the Matunas' Optimal Game Weight formula. So I start running numbers for the 30-06 tossing the 208 AMAX downrange at 2600fps. Low and behold that could make for a lethal combination on game out to 1050 yards on 180# game animals.
So it was off to the range to develop a load using the 208 AMAX. RL17 was our powder of choice. The Sig rifle has a hammer forged, 4 groove, 1/10 twist 22" barrel so we were good to go there.
I loaded up two ladders starting from 52-56.5 grains. One load with CCI 200 primers and the other with Federal 210M's.
Both shot well. The nodes were easily apparent so we chose 55.5grains which yielded 2710fps average over my M2 Chrono with IR screens. The 5 shot group turned in a .898" 5 shot group at 100. Couldn't be happier.
So now armed with real world load data and accuracy capability it looks as if this load will be sufficient to take 180# game at a distance of 1125 yards. So considering that max shot would be 800 yards, this load is capable of taking game up to 343# at 800 yards. Still retaining 1403 ft. lbs. of energy.
The OGW formula is as follows as according to Bryan's Second Edition book: <span style="font-size: 14pt">V³W² × 1.5 × 10¯¹²</span>
e.g. 1410^3*208^2*1.5*10^-12= 181.92#'s
The formula calculates for energy at the muzzle. By using your ballistic program, you have to calculate the downrange velocity to calculate the max game weight that the projectile is capable of lethally taking effectively.
This could be interesting for 308 as well shooting this bullet.
Just wanted to share as I found this information interesting and useful for my application. Thank you Bryan!
While I know this is not exact science it does provide data for a starting point. REal world field data is where the truth will lie, and this will be put to the test in about 3 months.
