Plan is to get 5 boxes of 20 each (to start with) for a 20" 1:10 barrel. Shoot for groups at 100m to see what the Bergara likes. So far I have.....

168gr BTHP Prvi Partizan Match
168gr GDSP Speer Gold Dot
168gr BTHP Hornady Match
168gr OTM PMC SMK Match
175gr BTHP Federal Gold Medal Match

I'm also curious about .308 subsonic? Corbon has a 200gr FMJ-RBT. Worth a try? And how is the Magtech 168gr stuff for practice?

It's too bad you didn't ask before buying your ammo. IMO 5 boxes is more than you need determine a given round's accuracy -- 2 boxes should be enough. That said...

I haven't shot the Prvi. I've heard various reports, good and not so good. I suspect for the money it's OK, but not up to the consistency of the Federal & Hornady ammo. But if you can get it for a decent price, and the performance meets your needs, then great.

I haven't shot the Speer Gold Dots. I don't consider them a target round. <<insert same last sentence from Prvi>>

Hornady 168 hpbt. Decent target ammo. Less expensive than Amax or ELD Hornady, however I don't think it has the accuracy of Amax or ELD. This should be noticeably better target ammo than Prvi or Speer.

I haven't shot the PMC. I suspect it should be a little more accurate that the Prvi. PMC tends to be good ammo for the price, but not to the level of the big brands, such as Federal & Hornady. <<insert same last sentence from Prvi>>

I have shot a boat load of FGMM 175. Good stuff for what you're doing. In times of panics, its price suck. Right now you can find really good sales every few weeks. It's a rare production rifle that doesn't shoot FGMM 175 well.

308 subsonic is notorious for poor accuracy, even at 100 yards. If you want a subsonic 308 bullet, consider a 300 BLK.

I've yet to see Magtech ammo with great accuracy. I haven't shot any kind of Magtech ammo in any of my firearms in many, many years.

Until you really understand the ballistics of various rounds, I recommend shooting the same ammo for all distances and all targets. Definitely try a few ammo types to see what your gun likes. Then stick to one -- or maybe two -- ammo types for all shooting. It's better to try to shoot perfectly 5 rounds that cost $1.00 each than to shoot with half-assed interest 10 rounds that cost $.50 each.

Every bullet is its own group. You have a good rifle. Don't waste shots with ammo that kinda/sorta/maybe goes where you aim. If you need to conserve ammo costs -- dry fire, then dry fire, and finally keep dry firing.

*****
If you absolutely must have more ammo options:
Black Hills match ammo. There are a number of great loads they make with various bullets.
Federal GMM 168. Since you're going out to only 500 yards, the 168 SMK bullet still flies well. Tends to cost a little less than FGMM 175.

Hornady 168 ELD. The 178 may work well for you, too. Their 155's are good loads.
Corbon's match loads are pretty much all good, regardless of bullet weight -- 155, 175, 185. They tend to be expensive.
Fiocchi makes a good version of FGMM. Same with ADI/Aussie Outback -- if you can find it.

Stay away from the Hornady Superformance line. The loads are accurate, but way too hot.

Lapua's ammo shoots well in most guns, but is very expensive. Ditto for ASYM and Applied Ballistics.

Winchester's match ammo shoots well, but not as well as Federal. And it costs more than Federal.
Remington's match ammo doesn't shoot well and is expensive.

Can't weigh in on the commercial loads you list unfortunately. I have friends that swear by Black Hills ammo in both 168 and 175gr.

Do you handload?

If so both Sierra and Hornady 168 and Sierra 175 bullets over Varget or IMR4064 give between 0.5 to 0.3 MOA out of my 20" heavy barrel 1:10 twist .308 rifle.

It should go without saying that each rifle will have its own ammo / load preferences so what works for one won't necessarily for another.

quote:

Originally posted by AllenInWV:
Plan is to get 5 boxes of 20 each (to start with) for a 20" 1:10 barrel. Shoot for groups at 100m to see what the Bergara likes. So far I have.....

168gr BTHP Prvi Partizan Match
168gr GDSP Speer Gold Dot
168gr BTHP Hornady Match
168gr OTM PMC SMK Match
175gr BTHP Federal Gold Medal Match

I'm also curious about .308 subsonic? Corbon has a 200gr FMJ-RBT. Worth a try? And how is the Magtech 168gr stuff for practice?

I believe he bought the five boxes listed above....not five boxes of each......

Gotcha. Readin' skilz iz impotant.

Now that I look at the op again, maybe nothing has been purchased yet.

I like the IMI 175 grain. Link

Yeah, that's correct. Just one box (of 20 rounds) of each type. I actually haven't bought any yet, that's just what's sitting in my cart right now. If any were clearly "must try" (like the FGMM) or "must avoid", I will adjust accordingly.

I do not handload yet. Gonna find a factory load that works well first, practice/learn, then stretch out to maybe further. I'm just really looking to keep it in a plate-sized target at say 600m or so.

Thanks for the input!

No experience with any of those rounds, but Chris Kyle liked the Black Hills stuff. That alone speaks volumes for the Black Hills stuff, but it is a little on the expensive side, so I’ve not tried any. I hand load all of my .308, but I’ve never shot out any further than 300 yards.

My rifles do well with Federal 168 and 175 Gold Medal Match and Hornady A-MAX loads from 155 to 178 grains. I haven’t tried much Hornady ELD loads yet, but I would expect them to be as good.

Speer Gold Dot was horrible (5-6 inch “patterns” at 100 yards) from my Ruger (that produced many ~0.5 MOA groups with Hornady 155 grain TAP). It shoots much better from a TRG-22 and Tikka T3, but nothing spectacular.

I’ve experimented with a couple of factory 308 Winchester subsonic loads and had poor results. The Cor-Bon was very inconsistent, with some groups from the TRG-22 running about 1 MOA, but others opening up to nearly 4 inches at 100 yards with vertical stringing. The Lapua was better in very limited testing, but I’ve fired only one group with it and it measured about 2.5 inches at 100 yards. The strange thing about the Lapua was of the four shots I fired, they produced two very nice groups; unfortunately, the groups were made in the order of high hit, low hit, high hit, low hit. Velocities of the shots were 1053 fps, 921, 1031, 907, and I suspect that was the reason for the vertical stringing.

There's no doubt that Chris Kyle had incredible skills with a rifle. And his skills demanded that his ammunition be up to the task. I've found that BH ammo is loaded to very consistent muzzle velocities/SD/ES -- from one lot to the next, across months, even years.

That said, I have not found BH 308 ammo with 168 SMK and 175 SMK bullets to be as accurate as their counterparts from Federal, Fiocchi, Hornady, or Aussie Outback. And this accuracy is measured from 100 to 1,000 yards. BH's new 175 TMK load's accuracy is lackluster at best in my Defiance action, Bartlein barrel rifle. I have a couple boxes of BH's 168 TMK load stashed away for use in my next 308 barrel, mainly because the ballistics on that bullet are so good. But the BH 168 TMK load doesn't have the accuracy I see with Hornady and Federal ammo in my current Bartlein barrel, which is now around 5k rounds down range.

There is likely no documented precision 308 rifle with a higher round count that Jacob Bynum's loaner rifle at Rifles Only. IIRC when I last shot it, his AIAW was on its 17th or 18th barrel, with something like 105k total rounds. Just about every quality barrel on the market has been plumbed to that chassis. Jacob states that BH ammo shoots well in that rifle, but Federal, Hornady, and Corbon shoot more accurately.

I started shooting BH ammo during the first Obamo-era ammo panic. BH was one of the few decent brands that was available at non-inflated prices. I have since considered BH a reasonable backup for possible future ammo panics, in the event I run out of ammo and Federal/Hornady can't be found.

Interesting comments, fritz, about the Black Hills. I have also not found it to be as accurate as one would expect from Internet lore and from reading books and magazine articles. It’s certainly no better in my rifles than the Federal and Hornady loads I’m familiar with. I’ve tended to assume that I was at fault for the results I’ve gotten or that they were due to the quirks of my individual rifles.

It’s a simple fact of life that professional shooters (and many others) will often decide that one type of ammunition is best based on limited testing (or availability) and then never try anything else. They may get very good or even excellent results with their favorite, but if they stop searching at some point they may not discover the best possible load. And that’s not a criticism.

Snipers are more often than not issued their ammunition and have little or no choice in what they use. But even more important, they don’t have the luxury of experimenting with multiple loads. They have to become proficient as soon as they can, and consistency is of paramount importance. They can’t say, “Well, let’s see how this load performs today.”

When I'm not being an asshat, Federal GMM 168/175 can produce 100 yard groups from .3 to .5 for me. And this is repeatable. Hornady will be in the .4 to .6 ballpark. My records show a couple of .5s from various BH loads, but it's not consistent. Most of my BH groups are.....larger

Now put a similar rifle & ammo in the hands of a talented shooter and the groups will compress to .1s or .2s. I've seen this with both precision rifle instructors and ex-snipers returning stateside, shooting both my rifle and similar rigs. Maybe Chris Kyle can produce consistent sub-1/4 MOA results with BH ammo -- and it's possible BH was his issued ammo. Not only would such accuracy be good enough for his purposes, but maybe he had no other ammo options in the field. So bingo, back stateside, Chris shoots BH because he knows exactly how it performs. I can't fault such logic.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:
I haven’t tried much Hornady ELD loads yet, but I would expect them to be as good.

The jury is still out for 308 ELD loads in my rifle. The two boxes of 168 ELDM I shot were sub-MOA at 100 yards, but not up to the benchmark set with 168 AMax or 168 BTHP. Over the fall & winter I intend to try again, in case I just wasn't having good days. The ELDM ammo did fly well at distance (500-700 yards), however.

I find this performance odd with my 308, because the ELDM bullets perform better than AMax in my 6.5 Creedmoor. In my 20" barrel AR-15, the 73 grain ELDM loads are just great -- noticeably better than Hornady 75 BTHP ammo. In my 18" barrel AR-15, the 73 grain ELDM loads perform about the same as 75 BTHP. As they say, ever barrel is different.

quote:

Originally posted by AllenInWV:
Plan is to get 5 boxes of 20 each (to start with) for a 20" 1:10 barrel. Shoot for groups at 100m to see what the Bergara likes. So far I have.....

168gr BTHP Prvi Partizan Match
168gr GDSP Speer Gold Dot
168gr BTHP Hornady Match
168gr OTM PMC SMK Match
175gr BTHP Federal Gold Medal Match

I'm also curious about .308 subsonic? Corbon has a 200gr FMJ-RBT. Worth a try? And how is the Magtech 168gr stuff for practice?

I'm using the Federal GMM 168 gr, same barrel length and twist as yours on my SPS. At 100 yards it's producing a very small ragged hole, at 200 it's making a pretty tight clover.

OK...maybe i missed it, but what do you think of the rifle? I'm on the fence between a Bergara and the Gen2 Weatherby....

My Tikka shoots Hornady 168 Amax the best

Also, look up Prime and try some of their stuff. Never shot the 308 Prime, but the 6.5CM is the bee's knees in my rifle. So much so, I have duplicated the load with their brass and the Norma bullet they use.

RMD

quote:

Originally posted by Tompow:
OK...maybe i missed it, but what do you think of the rifle? I'm on the fence between a Bergara and the Gen2 Weatherby....

Haven't shot it yet. Got the scope and bipod yesterday. Put it all together last night and took some pics. It looks and feels good.

Tomorrow I may pick up some ammo locally and try to get it roughly sighted in at 100m.

Oh, and FGMM in 168 and 175, and that IMI Razorcore stuff in the same weight are on the way in.