Badlands Precision Bullets thread - From BC to terminal ballistics

[Ross1147]

Cody,
So no loss in confidence in these bullets after last years elk and minimal expansion? I have some SBDIIs in 257 and been kicking around the idea of the 250s for my 338SS but am a little worried with the reduced speed of the SS compared to your Norma. I know their website says 1900 fps for expansion, is that a good #? Thanks!

 

[codyadams]

Cody,
So no loss in confidence in these bullets after last years elk and minimal expansion? I have some SBDIIs in 257 and been kicking around the idea of the 250s for my 338SS but am a little worried with the reduced speed of the SS compared to your Norma. I know their website says 1900 fps for expansion, is that a good #? Thanks!

Well a few things I consider with that,

First off these sbdii's have a different hollow point design that supossedly expands much better. Also, these bullets are 20 grains lighter, with a slightly higher bc, so impact speeds will be much greater at comparable ranges. Also, I think terminal performance would have been different had I hit where I was supposed to, just not sure, so I am willing to test them some more

 

[Swamplord]

Punch him through both shoulders down lower to break him down on the first shot

years back I'd plugged a nice billy with a 180 Fail Safe and he jumped down a cliff and his skull disintegrated on impact along with splintering one of the horns

I put it behind the shoulder and it penciled through without expanding, should have smashed his shoulders, worked great on moose that way, not much mass on a billy goat to open up a hard bullet

 

[codyadams]

Did a seating depth test with the .338 250 SBDII, shot it at 250 yards. Just used 91 grains Retumbo, as that is a moderate to modest load, shouldn't have any serious pressure concerns.

They hated being close to the lands, grouped over 2.5 MOA at .010" off, .030" off was a little better but still almost 1.5 MOA, then at .050" off it started coming together with a .62 MOA group, and from there out stayed under 1 MOA. .070" was .93 MOA, .090" was .86 moa, and .110 was .77 moa. The velocity was around 2875 at .010" off, then dropped to about 2865 average at .030" off, then really leveled out from .050"-.090" off, averaging right around 2842 fps, with an e.s. of 22 fps, 8 of the 9 being within 14 fps of each other. I think .090" is a tipping point because of the one at 2827, then at .110" off velocity dropped again to around 2830 average.

So I'm going to go with .050" off for now, and do a ladder test. Got them loaded up and ready to go!!

 

[SoDak338Lap]

Did a seating depth test with the .338 250 SBDII, shot it at 250 yards. Just used 91 grains Retumbo, as that is a moderate to modest load, shouldn't have any serious pressure concerns.

They hated being close to the lands, grouped over 2.5 MOA at .010" off, .030" off was a little better but still almost 1.5 MOA, then at .050" off it started coming together with a .62 MOA group, and from there out stayed under 1 MOA. .070" was .93 MOA, .090" was .86 moa, and .110 was .77 moa. The velocity was around 2875 at .010" off, then dropped to about 2865 average at .030" off, then really leveled out from .050"-.090" off, averaging right around 2842 fps, with an e.s. of 22 fps, 8 of the 9 being within 14 fps of each other. I think .090" is a tipping point because of the one at 2827, then at .110" off velocity dropped again to around 2830 average.

So I'm going to go with .050" off for now, and do a ladder test. Got them loaded up and ready to go!!
View attachment 275160

Interesting, I tried .020" jump and they seemed to like it. I've yet to test at distance but they formed a nice .6 moa group. Maybe I should try more jump.

 

[codyadams]

Interesting, I tried .020" jump and they seemed to like it. I've yet to test at distance but they formed a nice .6 moa group. Maybe I should try more jump.

Well, the 270 SBD's didn't seem to care that much, though they did shoot slightly better at around .060" jump I think I was running? But not a huge difference. With these in my gun, the difference is ridiculous, over 4x the group size. If your already getting satisfactory accuracy it may not matter much, but if you like to tune and experiment, I would say it's worth it. My general load work up goes - establish max pressure/look for flat spots in velocity, gross seating depth test, primer test, ladder test around the velocity range I want to bracket, then if I want to tune more, fine tune seating depth, and possibly neck tension. I already did a primer test that I did not list here, the GM215M's shot better than the CCI 250's.

 

[Gstew1930]

I'm going to order some of the 150's for my 7 saum. I would like to see some more terminal performance with these

 

[SoDak338Lap]

Well, the 270 SBD's didn't seem to care that much, though they did shoot slightly better at around .060" jump I think I was running? But not a huge difference. With these in my gun, the difference is ridiculous, over 4x the group size. If your already getting satisfactory accuracy it may not matter much, but if you like to tune and experiment, I would say it's worth it. My general load work up goes - establish max pressure/look for flat spots in velocity, gross seating depth test, primer test, ladder test around the velocity range I want to bracket, then if I want to tune more, fine tune seating depth, and possibly neck tension. I already did a primer test that I did not list here, the GM215M's shot better than the CCI 250's.

Whether or not I test more probably will depend on how they do at distance, generally I like to dial a load in as best as i can if time permits.

Honestly I feel like the load development on these from the 270s was too easy (maybe i got lucky?). I took my load for the 270s, knocked it down 2 grains and did a ladder test of .3 gr increments at 350m, picked the middle of the closest vert spread (velocity also was quite flat) and ran it. Velocity is sitting right at 2910 fps.

 

[willfrye027]

Load development with the 110gr .257 in my 25-06 was very easy. It's a pretty finicky barrel. They shot quite a bit better than the 131 ACEs did.

 

[codyadams]

Had pretty good results with my 600 yard ladder test, from the pics below you can see that there seems to be a pretty good node around 91.2 through 92.4 before it jumps significantly. The wind was pretty shifty, going anywhere from almost non existent up to 6 or 7 at times, I held off for three rounds but decided to just have the same windage hold and see how much it affected it, so I don't put too much weight in the lateral movement. But 91.5-92.4 had less than 1 inch of vertical, even with 43 fps velocity variance over almost a full grain of powder.

It seems like it may have been starting to settle down about at 93.2 and 93.5 in the low 2900 fps range, I may play with that a little bit, as the velocity there seems pretty stable too, but if not, 92 grains around 2875 would probably be sufficient.

 

[SoDak338Lap]

Had pretty good results with my 600 yard ladder test, from the pics below you can see that there seems to be a pretty good node around 91.2 through 92.4 before it jumps significantly. The wind was pretty shifty, going anywhere from almost non existent up to 6 or 7 at times, I held off for three rounds but decided to just have the same windage hold and see how much it affected it, so I don't put too much weight in the lateral movement. But 91.5-92.4 had less than 1 inch of vertical, even with 43 fps velocity variance over almost a full grain of powder.

It seems like it may have been starting to settle down about at 93.2 and 93.5 in the low 2900 fps range, I may play with that a little bit, as the velocity there seems pretty stable too, but if not, 92 grains around 2875 would probably be sufficient.


View attachment 275597View attachment 275598

That's pretty good I'd say! Just curious, how well does the colored bullets and white paper method work?

 

[codyadams]

That's pretty good I'd say! Just curious, how well does the colored bullets and white paper method work?

Fantastic, even doing two tone colors as long as they aren't similar. Orange and brown are hard to distinguish, but if you can see all the other ones you can figure out which is which. Purple and red together show up great, blue and green, etc. Works even better if you put some water on it to bleed the colors

 

[SoDak338Lap]

Fantastic, even doing two tone colors as long as they aren't similar. Orange and brown are hard to distinguish, but if you can see all the other ones you can figure out which is which. Purple and red together show up great, blue and green, etc. Works even better if you put some water on it to bleed the colors

Awesome! I'll do that next time I do a ladder test.

 

[codyadams]

Awesome! I'll do that next time I do a ladder test.

Ya, just separate similar colors. With blue and purple, put them on opposite ends, so that they won't land near each other. Same with red/orange or red/brown. And I keep my ink off the bearing surface.....not sure if it matters, but hbn coating makes a difference, I wouldn't want to cause any unintentional inconsistencies.