Quote:
Originally Posted by Thunderclap
Primarily the rifle will be used for killing feral hogs quietly at long range. My thinking was that I would experiment with different types of bullets after I have the rifle to determine which one works the best, but from what you’re saying it sounds like I need to have the bullet picked out before I order the rifle.
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What do you consider to be "long range". I shoot supersonics out to 2000 yards. For me anything over 1000 yards is long range. For subsnoics though in my opinion long range starts where you HAVE to use a rangefinder to hit anyting. That starts somewhere around 300 yards. A 510 whisper will >easily< launch 700 grian bullets, and over 1000 grains is practcal in cast lead. Bullt shape harldy matters to 500 yards. I shoot 700 gn flat nose 458's.
The heavy VLD's Hornady's and Barnes solits have plenty of retained energy over 1000 yards, but your chance of hitting anthing due to velocity dispersion is low at that range.
I'd suggest you do some "what if's" using a ballistic computer. I use the Quickload/Quicktarget pair from Neco. Quickload can calculate chamber pressures, loads, effeects on seating depth, and the effects of barrel friction. Here are some other useful calculators free on line.
http://www.eskimo.com/~jbm/calculati...culations.html The drag and twist calulator here is excellent based on work done by Robert McCoy at the US Armys Ballistic Research labs. It's tediouis to use though. Note that most bullet dimensions are in calibers (decimal fractions of bullet diameter). The Greenhill formula isn't of much use for subsoinics. Unfortunately that calculator doesn't allow adjusting air density or speed of sound It's fixed.at standard conditions. With subsoinics the two rules are that the bullet weight alone (just under Mach 1) sets the muzzle energy and the bullet's BC and air density sets how much of that energy is retained dlownange. Ultra high BC's don't gain much, but BC's over about .5 are desirable for "practical" ranges. (300+ yards). To 100 yards a 700+ gn flat nose cylinder is ok.
As to bullets expanding, There was a Sherlock Holmes storry about a a sniper killiing people (and attempting to shoot Holmes) using a big bore air rifle shooting soft cast lead. A.C. Doyle knew of such rifles which were available tthen. Pure lead is excellent for it's subsonic terminal ballistics. No 50 BMG bullets will expand in flesh at subsoniic velocities, nor will solids.. The slitted Lehigh solids will (at least should). I have some but haven't shot them. A major problem for subsonics is bore friction. You need a very short barrel to shoot hard jacketed bullets they have to be lubed. Cast lead is simpler and for practical length actions can typically carry more energy just because of lead's density. With subsonics you're fighting primarily the time filght squared drop which is essentially the same for all heavy subsonics for a few hundred yards.
I cant' advise what's best. I'm still experimenting.
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