dropping. The interesting thing here, and in most bullet comparisons as far as drop are concerned is that there really isn't that much difference. Yes, at 3,000 yards you can see the difference clearly, but nobody shoots at those ranges except
snipers from Fort Benning. In general, if you do a chart like this for 200, 250, and 300 grain .338 bullets you will see surprisingly little difference. One might assume that different BC's would make for vastly different trajectories, but this is not
the case.
Next is the retained energy for the same three bullets, and it is HERE that you see how big a difference a higher BC bullet can have. The retained energy for the A-Max bullet is MUCH different, and in .338 bullets the 300 grain .768 BC Matchking
also dwarfs the 250 and 200 grain bullets in retained energy. So high BC bullets are NOT about better trajectories, they are about retaining energy much farther out than less efficient designs. On this note I handloaded some 7mm Rem Mag
ammo for a guy who went elk hunting every year, and I got the highest BC 175 grain bullet I could find. Now all my friend's buddies were shooting 300 Win Mags, and used to make fun of him with his little "*****" 7mm Mag. I did the retained
energy charts for their ammo and my friend's, and at any range in excess of 200 yards HIS rifle hit harder than their "BIG" 300 Win Mags. That shut them up pretty quick.
I had planned to do a data point with a 1000 yard zero, but the charts showed so little difference that I didn't bother prining them out. The trajectory tables DID show a difference, but in the larger scheme of things it just wasn't very much.
Because of this, I chose to do a chart for a 5,000 yard zero, and here you can actually begin to visualize the difference in the bullet's flight. For the A-Max the barrel angle is 34 degress above level, and for the other two the barrel angle is 32
degrees. I got these angles from the maximum distance calculation in part 1. The difference is quite obvious, but again we are talking about bullets with vastly different BC's, and at a distance of three miles or more.
The retained energy difference is again huge, and as I said before, you will see differences like this in 500 yard plots that you might actually shoot an elk at.
Finally, to actually show the trajectories as they actually are, I set the zero range for each bullet to te maximum range for that bullet, and as you can see, a higher BC allows the bullet to retain its energy and fly a LOT farther.
