Recommended Factory Berger 300 Norma for 20” 1/8 twist barrel

[Familydude]

Just picked up an AXSR that came with a factory 20” 1/8 twist barrel. Typically shoot 6GT and 6.5 Creedmoor to include in a PSR setting, but want to switch things up.

Going with factory ammo at this point and am leaning toward Berger. I’d like to get out to a mile at minimum for now, with longer distances in the future I hope. I’d appreciate recommendations.

Thanks in advance.

Also, can’t own a suppressor in my state. Will be using an Area 419 Hellfire.

 

[eod_tek]

Unless something has drasticllly changed since I've been stuck overseas the last 6 months, you dont really have a ton of options for factory ammo.

In my experience, the berger ammo with 215s shot fine, about MOA for 5 round gorups. I tried the federal premium with 215s and my barrel was not a fan, maybe 1.5-2 moa, ymmv.

That being said, depending on target size, a mile is a tough shot on factory loads. Its doable but be prepared for the SD of the ammo alone to put you off target. In my testing the frederal premiums had an SD of 17.3 and an ES of 49 for 10 rounds and berger was similar with an SD of 18.2 and an ES of 52.

If you really want consistency for shooting at a mile, I 10/10 recommend handloading or using a company like unknonwn munitions to load for you. If you are okay with blowing through a half box or more of ammo to get a hit or your targets are larger, then youll have fun.

Good luck, and enjoy!

 

[Familydude]

Great info. Thank you.

 

[vh20]

Berger 230 OTM Tactical ammo gave best performance for me out of the few factory options available (Federal Premium, Norma, and…that’s about it besides Berger). It gave best ES/SD of the three. While I have seen it occasionally as bad as mentioned in the previous post, I usually find it a good bit better than 52/18.2. Also, you have Lapua brass left over for your eventual handloads, which is where you will end up if you get serious about ELR. I have shot over 1300 of these rounds, and some lot numbers (pre-Covid) were amazing, with consistent single-digit SDs around 7-ish. Nowadays not so much, but it’s still the best factory option. All three brands shot sub-MOA (all used the same 230 Berger bullet), and the Berger ammo was easily 0.5 MOA, sometimes less. But as said above, at a mile you will just have to live with vertical dispersion due to the higher SD than a well-tuned handload. I run a chrono on every shot (used to be Labradar, now Garmin), and if a shot went high or low, and the chrono showed it was correspondingly way above or below the average, I chalked it up to things I can’t control, and did not “correct” elevation based on that impact.