Home Forums Reloading Varmint Rifles Stick with 80/85 grain or drop to 70/75?

My supply of 80 and 85 grain Sierra bullets for my 6mm is starting to dwindle and I am thinking of dropping down to 70-75 grain V-Max or Blitzking bullets. These are used for coyotes from close in to around 400 yards. The 65 V-Max has also been considered but I wonder how the wind will push it around. I have no experience with the lighter bullets in this cartridge and am wondering if I would gain much in the way of flattening trajectory or should I stick with the heavier bullets to help buck wind and hit harder at extended ranges? Anybody went from light to heavy or heavy to light and what made you do so?

The 87gr Vmax is hard to beat in a 243 Win. We have shot them to 800yds on steel and they smack the crap out of coyotes too.

Actually I had forgotten about that bullet. A bud of mine loves it in his 6mm/284. May have to grab some and see how they work up.

All I run is the 65g vmax for coyote in my 6x45, 6x6.8 & .243 rigs. Never an issue with them out at 600 yards or 40 yards.
I shoot in 0-23 mph winds calling them.
They are hard to find though if at all.
The next bullets are a 55g& 58g & still no major wind issues to 400 yards. I call them in under 150 yards 99.3% of the time.
If you have a need for heavies look at the 70g NBT, this is a excellent coyote round as well, but will make exit holes big.
I have my chrony and drop/drift tags attached to my rigs, so its a fast adjustment IF needed on a coyote that hangs up.

I've tried everything in .243 win an always come back to the Sierra 85gr. bthp game-king. I have a few partial boxes of lighter bullets. If you want to try them I can make a list an give you a good price........If interested please pm........ Redworm..........

I don't have a 6mm but do use a .243 for some applications. I started using it for rock chucks and rabbits with a 55g NBT running along at 4050 fps out of a 24" barrel. After fighting some of the higher winds and longer distances for coyotes I moved up to the 70g NBT and solved those problems in the equipment.

As has been mentioned above a 70g NBT at high speeds ( mine are just under 3700fps) is not a fur friendly set up. Two of our sons were visiting recently and on a coyote hunt close to town one of the sons was using that rifle with the 55g NBT on a running coyote just under 200 yards. Not a pretty sight but very effective.

I have used this bullet on deer and always thought it would be a touch too tough on dogs as it always exited on deer. I hunt around a lot of stock so I need to minimize ricochets as much as possible. Going to load a few 70 Ballistic Tips and see how I like their performance, if I dont care for those I will be back to the 80 Sierra Blitz.

The only dog I've shot w Sierra 85 BTHP was a feral Rottweiler running deer. Worked well.