Personally a couple of friends and myself, have been very fortunate to find great shooting loads with minimal amount of work in our 26 Noslers. We all shoot pretty much one load with 140 Bergers in front of a generous amount of Retumbo. Velocity averages 3274 fps, while giving two of our rifles 1/2 moa, and the 3rd shoots a little better than that. All the 26's are in Browning X-bolt with one of them being a Hells Canyon model, and I can say I am pretty happy with the configuration. Only issue I don't care for is that if you are going to put a turreted scope on it, you need short knobs on the windage adjustment. It will pop brass right back in the chamber with it being so low profiled. As for ammo, wait for the Nosler Competition 140's to go on sale for 45.00 a box and grab a few. Its cheaper than buying the brass. Do your breaking in with that have some fun getting used to it and then move on to handloading for it. I don't think chasing 3400 with 140 gr bullets is very productive with a short lived barrel but slowing them down just a tad sure doesn't hurt.
