sparhawk
What exactly is a “Sniper bullet”?
The answer to your question is none. All those bullets were designed to expand at velocities well over 1000fps.
O.K. - I knew the moment that I hit enter that I should not have used the "S" word, but I was too tired to edit it. Alright! - I mean "Tactical" as in law enforcement or military use (or maybe even home defense, who knows?)
Engel has a 180 Grain .308 subsonic round that they say expands reliably at 1,000 fps. No one seems to know how it is built. I was wondering if there were any others like it on the market?
The Army uses M118LR 7.62 (308) in the M24 SWS. The bullet is the Sierra 175gr HPBT Matchking traveling at approx 2600fps.
For home defense there are better choices than the 300 whisper.
If I were going to use the subsonic 300 whisper for hunting I would shoot the heaviest bullet that would stabilize in my rifle. With a 1/8 twist barrel you could shoot 220 or 240 grain bullets. Hornady makes a 30 CAL 220 GR Round Nose that will do OK within reasonable range. If zerod at 100 yds you will be 4" high at 50yds, 14" low at 150yds, and 38" low at 200yds. Knowing the exact distance of your game and the amount of elevation to dial into your scope will be crucial. At 200yds your bullet will only have 386 Ft-Lbs of energy. I would keep shots under 100yds.
I've been looking at the Hawk line of bullets for a 300 whisper bolt gun that I've been working on.....everything I hear about their bullets is that the expand well at modest velocities and have good weight retention......http://www.hawkbullets.com/maintest.htm
nice site LE me I'm shooting the M1S over a R/R lower ,also still working up loads (subsonic is all I'm interested in right now) 220smk over 1680/4227 so far I'm happy with it will do some chrono work this week , did the fire lap method recommended by pitt the thing shoots nice , I like it,
I guess one comment I'd like to add is that the round was actually developed from the .223 back in the 60's as a wildcat deer and small game round. It seems that whenever a new cartridge comes out someone has to fiddle with it and the .223 had a lot of mods done up and down in size. I think the only real claim jones has is putting the heavy subsonic bullet in the round though he seems to get credit for inventing the whole idea of subsonics which is not the case at all. Not trying to take anything away from his contribution but don't forget all the previous steps he built on top of.
It is good to see some dedicated pages with a bit more than just the small blurb normally given to the round.
Thanks so much for getting the website going. One thing I would add is if you have a Stoney Point/Hornady AOL gauge then you can send in a few fired cases and they can modify a case to fit the OAL gauge. I think the cost is around $10 and it takes a couple of weeks.