168 VLD Berger

[shootinfool]

If your gun has had any gun work done, like squearing up the action, glass bedding and all that then it will probably see the best accuracy with the berger bullets when you jam them into the lands and grooves anywhere from .002-.015. These are tricky bullets to figure out and they are definately different in every single gun. I almost started laughing out loud when I read your first post and it sounded like all you needed was the recipe that everyone else was using. They definately need alot of tweeking to figure out. It was a long process for me I know that much. I use 7828 ssc for my 7 mag in a remington 700 pss and it took a lot of tweeking to get this load to shoot, but it is definately a shooter. good luck with all of the load workups, I hope you get this one figured out sooner than later.

 

[HTG]

Thanks, What I didn't relize was that I had a pet load in the factory Hornady 162 BTSP, it was absolutly perfect in this gun. I've taken several big game animals with this rifle to 500 yards with that load. Hopefully the $500 I just spent on reloading equipment will pay off when I buy a new long range set up. I've already shot 80 rounds of new reloads and I have to go out again to try a few other bullet seatings. Hopefully the next shoot tell me if I will have to start over or if this load will work.

 

[HTG]

I tried few other bullet seatings and found one that is shooting 1/2" groups at 100. I also cleaned the barrel and I think that helped.

 

[shootinfool]

berger bullets, along with several other vld style bullets, are tricky to figure out. In my opinoin, you should be doing load development with these bullets at, at least, 300 yds. you may get some 1/2 groups at 100 but then they turn into 5 in groups at 300-400. They may be poor groups at 100 and awsome at 300. These bullets can take some time to stabilize before you can tell the true potential of the load. Just my opinion though.

 

[calvinlb]

If you have the Brass, give it a try. Do a quick sort by weight and seperate any that are far from the average weight. Then keep those seperate and see if they all shoot the same for you.

AJ

I have used Nossler brass but, I way all my brass and seperate any that show a 2 to 3 grain weight differance. I group the cases by 10th of a grain differance before reloading. By doing this I find my groups run at 100 yards run at 3/4 to 1 inch.

 

[Fitch]

I'm shooting the 7mm 168 gr Berger VLDs in my Tikka T3 7mm Rem Mag using 74.9 gr Retumbo, Federal GM210M primers, with the bullets seated 0.006" into the lands. My overall cartridge length from case head to tip of the bullet measures approximately 3.452".

Muzzle velocity is 3080 fps. My barrel is 24 3/8" long. My gun shoots this load to about 0.3 to 0.4 moa at 300 to 600 yds.

Just to illustrate that different rifles like different loads, and different lots of powder may make a big difference ...

My rifle (Savage 112BVSS, 26" barrel) likes 69.5g Retumbo, with the 168g VLD bullets seated .005" into the lands, fired Win Brass FL sized but with shoulders only bumped ~0.002", and WLRM primers. Chrono says 2989 fps average with ES in the teens. Based on leakage around the primer and difficult extraction the max in my rifle is 70.5g of Retumbo, all other things kept the same.

The rifle shoots any load from 69.0g to 70.0g even in mixed batches into a half inch (repeated ladder tests) and consistent 69.5g loads into ~.3". I was hoping for a bit more velocity, especially with the relatively heavy 26" heavy varmint barrel that is standard on the BVSS but this is what it shoots, so this is what I'm going to feed it.

Fitch