.338 Norma max effective range

[Julie]

I am building a .338 Norma for long range hunting and was hoping to have a setup capable of clean kills at 1000 yards and beyond. However, as I am looking at data from ballistic calculators, (I don't have it complete yet) I can't find any load data that will get me to the magic 1800FPS at 1000 yards. Up to now, I have only shot steel at 1000 and beyond with my 6.5 Creedmoor so velocity and energy didn't matter. Does anyone here have any experience hunting at that distance? Does the 1800 FPS threshold matter that much?
Thanks,

Julie

 

[MagnumManiac]

No it doesn't.
Bullets still work at less than this 1800fps.
In fact a bullet that is doing 1200fps, just above Mach1, is still going fast enough to expand.
I tested 129g ABLR at 1300fps and they performed perfectly. In fact those bullets still expanded at 900fps in ballistic gel.
215g Berger failed to expand at those velocities.

Cheers.

 

[cjuve]

I run the improved version with the 250
Berger at 2980 and it will carry 2000 FPS out to 1000. Effective expansion is bullet dependent.

 

[moses42ak]

The 300 grain A Tip pushed at 2,770 has over 2k ft lbs of energy at 1,000 yards and is still at 1,826 FPS at that distance. The SMK is still traveling at 1,724 FPS with 1,981 ft lbs of energy. You're good out to 1k as long as you can hit it where you're supposed to.

 

[jrock]

I use 1600 fps in my calcs and it takes me to 1200 - 1300 yards with 250 to 300 grain high BC bullets. The 338NM is a freight train. I have a hard time believing it wouldn't kill based on the weight of the projectile alone.

If you use velocity as your primary criteria, you will find a bullet with half the weight can easily have 1600+ fps at 1000 yards. Then you have to decide how much energy you want to dish out at that range. I recommend to consider the amount of recoil and recoil reduction methods you may want to use in your choice.