Re: 175gr or 168gr???
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Greg Langelius *</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Maybe, if you're having problems with 168's out of your .308, you might be attacking the problem from the wrong end. I think the problem is the .308, not the 168.
The .308 was born as the bastard child of a compromise.
Uncle Sugar wanted to drive a 150-ish (actually 147gr) weight FMJ out of a less bulky cartidge package than the then-extant .30-'06. If that's the limit of your goals, then the compromise is a pretty good one.
If you're looking for it to carry heavier mail, you cross beyond the marginal capacity of the cartridge nearly immediately.
IMHO, the answer to the compromise's limitations is to go back to pre-compromise capabilities.
Sure, folks get the most improbably weighty/lengthy bullets to track nicely out of the .308; but face it folks, it's done by bumping all of them right along the wall of impracticality. There isn't a bullet among that won't shoot better (more practically) out of a .30-'06 than out of a .308.
Reloading costs, rifle differences, they are all excuses who come out to play when folks wrangle this choice. Makes one actually wonder how the world got along before the .308 got whacked on the butt and diapered out for the first time.
Actually it did just fine, and questions like the one we're hashing out here were never such an issue. Doubt me, ask Hitler and Tojo if the moldy old .30-'06 and its contemporaries were inappropriate to their tasks.
Greg </div></div>
Kinda missin your point here Greg, we're talkin .308's. Most cartraiges evolve as the years go by, the .308 did as did the 06. The .308 was deveoloped with a new set of parameters in mind, not to match the 06..... which it cant. As with many others, what the military wanted out of them is conciderably different than what the civi market wants. Compare the 06 to the 300WM and get about the same outcome but with the 06 on bottom. I agree with you on the 06, I luv 'em. IMO, it may be the best all around cartraige on the planet. As you pointed out, it is a bit more costly to shoot than a .308 but if you're not going past 1k, there is very little it will do better than a properly tuned .308. If you need to go heavier than 208 gr then I agree to go with an 06 or something larger but up to there....the .308 does very well.....JMO.
Blackops..... all true, but why look for a hybrid or any of the very few 168's that "will perform at 1000" when you can just go buy an easily obtainable 175/178 match bullet that will out perform any of them at LR for less $? What are you trying to gain by sticking to the 168's? Not being a smart ass brother, this is an honest question.
okie