Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Competitive Shooting First Impressions with the 7mm Berger Hybrids

After reading about the Hybrids from the posting of bohem, I was finally able to get my hands on some to try out. I was excited about the concept of this bullet with its BC greater than the VLD with less issues with seating depth due to its hybrid ogive, so finally loaded some up to try.

My rifle is chambered in .284 Shehane. The load consisted of BR2 primers with H4831SC powder.

10 shot group at 100 yards off bipod with back bag, (would like to have that first shot back)


I also shot 5 shot groups at 200 yards in an OAL test. My chamber seemed to like 0.010 to 0.020 off the lands. Here are the two groups in that order.




I originally planned to shoot at 600 yards, but the road to the range was getting black topped and I had to sit in traffic and missed the start of the match. I therefore, had to shoot at the BR range which only goes to 200 yards. I hope to stretch out to 600 yards to see if they hold up at that range.

So far, I am pleased with my preliminary results. I will post more results when I get out again. It they work at 600y, these will probably replace the 180g VLDs for me.

Hope this helps.

Nice shooting.

What is the weight and BC of the bullet you tested?

180g Berger Hybrid, 0.674 G1 0.345 G7. May get a pointing die and get the BC above 7.

Can anyone find these now? I really wanted to try the 180 bergers in my 7x300wtby, but the box I managed to order is non hunting version so I have to start over again....

Stock number maybe?

Unless the meplat is extremely ragged, which I doubt from Berger, there is no way you will gain 25 points or more with a pointing die.

According to Bryan Litz in the attached interview, it is possible. He states that the meplat is bigger than normal and with pointing, you should see about an 8% increase in BC. If an 8% increase, the G1 would be 0.727 and G7 of 0.374.

http://www.safclass.com.au/celebrity3.html

I got mine here,

http://store.thirdgenerationshootingsupply.com/browse.cfm/2,3121.html

and it looks like the stock number is BEG28407.

I also called Berger, and was told by their customer service people that Berger would be making more of these at the end of July. Hopefully more available then.

Wonder if they consider it a hunting capable one too?

Excellent link, thanks for posting it.

The below is from the article in the link.

"Most bullets realize around 2 to 4% improvement in BC from pointing. The 7mm Hybrid achieves an 8% improvement in the already high BC by pointing its tip." Makes sense now.

I went over to Swampy's to check out his offering for 7mm and his 180gr has a claimed BC of .735.

I shoot Swampy's 180 LBT in .308, which has a claimed BC of .575 and I was definitely interested in what Bryan was saying about the upcoming .30 caliber bullets but my thinking was these bullets would have to be quite heavy and sure enough he mentions a weight of 230+gr. That is going to be some increase in recoil with an F-TR rifle, amybe I'll leave it for the F-Openers unless the BC is just too good to pass up.

"The new .30 caliber bullets will have much higher BC�s than any existing line of bullets. Since they�re basically scaled up copies of the new 7mm Hybrid, the BC�s on the new .30 cal Hybrids will be higher than the 7mm�s."

Swampy's listed BC for the 7mm 180g bullet does not jive with Bryan Litz's testing. He found that bullet's BC to be 0.645 G1 and 0.330 G7.

Although his 6.5mm 140g BC is listed at 0.630 and Bryan found them to be 0.639.

I was surprised that one could be so close and one so far off.

Does the listed BC for your .308 bullets seem to jive with your come ups?

Also, you just might have to load up your .308 with RL17 and those 230g bullets and live with the recoil if the BC is greater than 0.7.

This is why is use the term "claimed BC." One must always be cautious of these claimed values.

As for the 180gr LBT, in fact I find them to be dead-on with my come-ups. So much so, that I was really surprised at how accurate a computer generated sheet could be. I used JBM and he now has the proper values for the 180 LBT from JLK.

As for your last comment, yeah that may be the thing to do, but for right now I have enough JLK 180LBTs to last me another year of LR competition and enough Varget to do both LR and MR for another year or more.

I will keep my eyes opened for the Berger hybrids, however. Thanks a lot for the info.

But $300 for a pointing die? Grumble, grumble. That is one thing I like about the JLKs, they don't need no pointing die.

Esp for only an 8% increase!

I still would like to be able to say I shoot a bullet with a BC greater than 7, I guess it is a sickness.

It's also all the extra work. The bullets don't point themselves. That's an extra step and it's one that you need to be careful with lest you mess up the jacket.


And that's an up to 8% not a minimum.

300 for the pointing die... saves you one point somewhwere... how much were motels, entry fees, fuel to travel to a state match, maybe even a day or two off.....

300 Ain't squat really.

True... too true. I'm not a big fan of people thinking they can 'buy' points with fancier gear or reloading gadgets, but all too often people (including me) balk at spending x amount of $$$ on a given piece of reloading gear that can provide tangible results, while easily spending several times that on the 'hidden' costs of the sport like fuel, lodging, meals, un-paid time off...

I certainly don't advocate spending more than you can afford, and I think most people can get more benefit from just getting out and putting rounds down range in less-than-perfect conditions... but at some stage you'll reach a point where having a slightly tighter group and more confidence in your shot call will be helpful. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for new or intermediate shooters unless they have nothing else left to spend their $$$ on (like more powder, bullets, and barrels for more practice...) but if you've scraped your way up to where you're making the leaders work for their wins (or are trying to keep an edge to defend your own)... I think pointing and uniforming your bullets certainly can't *hurt* your scores!

I was going to say something similar to what Monte said, so I'll just say I echo what he said.

I spent a bit of time at the Berger site this morning, looking at articles. This one came out as something to read:

http://02b0516.netsolhost.com/blog1/?p=133

They lowered the BC of the new 338 hybrid by 7%; it seems that once it went into production the original numbers were not reproducible. I'm shocked.

I'm also thinking that my 1:11.25 twisted F-TR rifle may not be able to handle the 230gr Berger hybrid. It does a great job on 180JLK LBT, 185 Berger LR and even 200 SMKs, but that 230 Berger is going to be loooong, probably needing a 1:10 twist.

I don't know for sure that a person can ever show proof positive of shrinking a group a few tenths.... mathematically you should.. BUT gain a bit of extra wind resistance and that, at least to me, can save you... Having won matches a number of times by one point, and having had one point there that was barely hanging...

I recall one time it was vivid for me.... I actually won the state match 800 yard line of a palma match with my service rifle.... the top couple of shooters all shot 149s, me included. We ALL got burned by that one unseen change.... and I won only by xs.... BUT it was wildly obvious that teh folks shooting bolt gun 308s were out further than what my 90 was... in fact if it had been just about an inch less in wind drift..... because they were outer 9s, I was an inner.. that was mostly folks that I knew shooting 190 and 210s in the 308s...

I might run into Bryan at a match tomorrow (Sunday), I'll see if I can drag any info out of him. We gave him a bit of a hard time about his Choo-Choo Charlie hat last weekend, he may not be real forthcoming with any data.

Engineers.......

Nobody using the RL-17 in there 284s?
Butch