crbutler wrote:Erud,
While Berger has a great benchrest accuracy reputation, they have also been trying to convince folks that their bullets are good hunting bullets.
Frankly, their hunting offerings look and perform like any other match bullet. Work OK if you hit the animal in the right spot and you are hunting animals in the right size category, but not IMO really a hunting bullet.
If they are passing that around and selling basically OTM bullets as fully hunting bullets to get in to the hunting market, what does that say about the company? Yes, some writers like Barnsness have drank the koolaid on them and again, in some situations it works just fine (so will a seirra matchking) but a bullet with no controlled expansion is not a hunting bullet. They are also pushing a lot of this long range hunting stuff (800+ yards) which I feel is not really ethical.
I agree that their manual has seemingly low powder charge loads with relatively high velocities for most cartridges as you state. If you know what you are doing, it's safe and you can get where you need to be by using a chronograph and watching the cases, but are they using tight chambered guns for load development? Who knows.
I just don't trust Berger much, even if I have had really fine results punching paper with their products. The bullet they make is very consistent and accurate, but other than that, they are stating a bunch of hogwash.
Erud wrote:Seismic,
Every cartridge in the Berger manual is seriously under-powered with their published data. I don't know if their legal department just got a little too excited or what, but I've found their data to be mostly useless. Heck, their max Varget charge for a .308 with 155's is a full 3 grains below what I've used in my last 4 Palma barrels. At any rate, the bad juju with their 300gr .338 offering was back in 2010. Are you suggesting that they have done nothing to correct the design flaw in the past 6+ years, and instead stole your load data and just capped the top end to keep their customers from ever uncovering the conspiracy? As Berger does more bullet testing and development than any company in the industry, that seems a little hard for me to believe. Have you tried calling them to ask them? I'd be pretty darned surprised if they haven't addressed an acknowledged flaw in that amount of time. They didn't get to the top of the bullet mountain by fleecing their customers, and they have a reputation to protect. The hybrid design in general is arguably one of the biggest advancements in bullet design in the last 50 years.
Return to Ammunition & Reloading
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 3 guests