When I got my Savage 99 in 308 WIN, I was trying my best to keep the loads more like a hot 300 Savage than a fullhouse 308 WIN.
My original plan was to use Hornady 150 grain IL SPs. I could never get a decent group with those. I finally settled on 165 grain Hornady over either Varget or H4895.
What I will say is the few times I've experimented with cranking up the load to full 308 win levels, I've found the recoil to be rather sharp. As it is, I'm pushing about 2600 fps which is fine for whitetail out of a treestand.
Stay away from military brass. One of my big problems early on was sticky ejections. Eventually one of the 'Campers let me know that military brass does not relax enough after being shot and can cause sticky ejections. I switched to Federal brass and never had the problem again.
