Thread: 308

having fun loading and shooting hornady 165gr sst out of my 22'' barrel tikka .what sort of grouping and stopping power should I be expecting at 700yrds? if a trophy red walked out , would it kill it humanley ?

You'll have to go to a range somewhere and c if you can hit roughly a dinner plate size target at 700yds 1st. Then see how good it groups at that distance. Then practise untill you can do it on a cold bore 1st round hit. Then make sure you can do that consistantly. Then go out to the bush and learn to do it out there with all the elements that come with shooting in the hills. Then yes it will kill a deer if you hit it in the right place. But with that caliber and bullet there is very little room for error. I would lower my expectations of that caliber to about 500-600 to be safe. Not saying you cant do it, its just that if your asking that sorta question you might not want to get to far ahead of yourself.


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I put a new scope on my gun the other day and zeroed it at 200 . then went out to 400yrds and dialled up the moa and found it shooting off to the right but 4inchs could it be my reloads spinning off target or more likely the scope not straight??????

Originally Posted by camza

I put a new scope on my gun the other day and zeroed it at 200 . then went out to 400yrds and dialled up the moa and found it shooting off to the right but 4inchs could it be my reloads spinning off target or more likely the scope not straight??????

More likely a slight breeze pushing the bullet around.

Yes a 308 with 165/168 sst/amax is very capable of massive trauma @ 700y if you are pushing them above 2700fps but that really is about the maximum you can expect clean killing with good placement....with bad placement it will be bad.

The 308 is a great calibre but the wind drift really rules it out for these kind of shots at living things unless conditions are near perfect, been there got the T shirt.

Er, most rifle ranges are flat and quite often sheltered.

Go to where you normally hunt. Shoot at rocks, over gullies, in windy conditions, from uncomfortable positions, with vegetation in the way etc. Now imagine your heart racing, and the target moving. If you can reliably place a shot into a dinner plate size target at those types of distances, go for it...

Or enter some gong shoots that involve medium range targets. See how often you can hit that size target in real-world conditions...

You can get an idea of spin drift using JBM online balistic calc. Put wind at 0, and enable spin. Only really comes into it at longer ranges.

To check scope cant, you will need a level on your scope as a reference, then shoot at a tall target, dial up at least 20 MOA.

Originally Posted by camza

I put a new scope on my gun the other day and zeroed it at 200 . then went out to 400yrds and dialled up the moa and found it shooting off to the right but 4inchs could it be my reloads spinning off target or more likely the scope not straight??????

Yea I think more likely wind as well. Have a look at your ballistic calculator, it wont take much wind at all to push a .308 that distance at 400yds. Correct (dial) for windage and have another crack would be the go.

thanks