Cannot wrap my head around barely over 3,000fps for my long range deersmacker, yet.
Your Mashburn should get a 140 over 3k with it's 26" barrel.
Hell the 7mm-08 can damn near do it with book loads and a 24" barrel.
My .280 A.I. shoots them at 3295 fps from a 24" PacNor 3 groove and a book load.
Buddies 7 RM and a 26" barrel clocks them at 3380 IIRC.
I was talking about the real heavies of 160 and up.
I was (am) getting 3650 with 120's so figured I should not have to lose down to much lower that 3450-3550, which is still pretty darned fast and those will outrun my 120TTSXS pretty quickly, too.
But as for over 140grs, I still love mega speed bangflops on normal range Mule Deer fairly often, and the longer mid range trajectory. The other limiting factor is this... My beautiful Len Brownell custom rifle has an exquisitely sculpted and fitted checkered STEEL buttplate! Cannot get really pumped up about shooting the heavies with this rifle. And for deer out to 600 max I do not need to. If I need to shoot heavy bullets my 338/8mm RemMAg pushes 225-300gr bullets to some wicked velocities and has a nice, big soft Limbsaver recoil pad
I think that I will start with Dobers 150gr load for my 140's and go from there.
