Hello all. I've recently purchased a new kimber mountain ascent in 308 win. I intend to use the rifle for a hunt in montana this November. I'm in the very beginning stages of developing a load for it. I wanted to try the berger 168 vld hunting. Using the hornady oal gauge I've measured the rifling in the kimber and found the throat to be very long, much longer than the magazine or the action. Since this is a hunting rifle I won't be seating them this long. So what I have done is loaded up 24 rounds all at the same length the max coal for 308. Starting at 42 gr of imr 4895 I've increased the charge by .2 gr I plan to shoot 2 three round groups of each. So with all that background info my question is this. Has anyone had any luck jumping vlds in rifles with long throats? Also what advise can you give in regard to my process? I've attached a picture. The round on the right is contacting the rifling, on the left is the oal I'll be seating to. Thanks.
Load Development Kimber 84m
- Thread starter Vig_1016
- Start date
I had intended to experiment with rounds seated at various length like berger recommends but the longest I can load them is already .110 off the rifling. Maybe i will get lucky and i can find the sweet spot from here or farther away. Thank you for your reply.
That is a good distance off. I was developing a load for a 270 recently and the classic hunters shot best .06 off I found out but I did that before I realized that the mag kept me off .1 something too. I tried testing deeper but no dice.
I fixed it by going with a game king.
I fixed it by going with a game king.
If those don’t work you could try the 155 Scenar in the 308. Lots of dead animals with that combo...
Shot groups with the 168 vlds at different powder charges and got poor results. Best group was well over 2 moa and velocities were very inconsistent. Decided to order some 168 gr berger classic hunters. Hoping to get much better results. At this point I have about 50 rounds down the tube. I have noticed with another rifle that accuracy didn't come until I had fired around 80 or 100 rounds. Hoping this gun will start grouping soon. I had some 150 gr nosler bt showed better results but still at 2 moa. A definite improvement with a traditional shaped bullet though.
I shot some game kings over 4064 on Sunday, worst group yet. Did some searching around, bedding job looks ok, mag box looks good. Something I noticed after taking a step back and reviewing my pile of targets is that group size seemed to be increasing each time I went to the range. I hadn't cleaned the bore for about 40 rounds so i decided to clean last night. Noticed shiny copper flakes on the patches and some blue on patches. So I cleaned the bore with hoppes copper solvent until no more blue came out. Perhaps I had built up too much fouling. I plan to re visit some of these loads with a clean bore and if I don't get better results I will be bringing my Montana rifle company x2 in 30-06 out west as it will shoot 180gr accubonds into the same hole over rl22. Much heavier rifle but very accurate.
All my kimber rifles are copper magnets. I can only shoot my 300 win mag about 25 times before it looks like a gold chain..... that's why I replaced the barrel. From my experience, kimber hunting rifles need to be cleaned every trip to the range. I mean less than 25 rounds through them.
Thank you for sharing, I will definitely keep this in mind going forward. I'm a little disappointed in this rifle with an msrp of 2 grand.
