Okay powdr, seeing as how pmr has beaten me to the draw I'd better trump up!
Keeping in mind that some of the components you have in the US are not so readily available here in Oz, and others may be hard to get most of the time, my choices may sometimes be 'second best' only. Also, where I hunt mostly, along the Great Dividing Range of south-eastern Australia, I may be presented with a shot at a 100 lb fallow doe or a 600 lb Sambar stag in habitat ranging from dense wet sclerophyll forest, to lightly forested fringe country, as such, I need a bullet that will hold together and penetrate the heavy muscled and strongly boned sambar, but still open-up reliably on the lighter-framed animals for quick/humane kills. A long-shot for me would be 250 yds, but I love to get in 'close and personal'. I guess you might say I'm a hunter rather than a 'shooter' ( not a moral issue, just how I get my rocks off I guess!).
I've had my Ruger Hawkeye blued/walnut .338 Fed. c/w 22"bbl since early 2010, so I've fiddled with lots of different loads and components. When I bought it I also bought 2 boxes of factory ammo- 1 ea of 180 NAB and 210 NPT, mainly for the brass. I later bought a box of blue-box 200g Unicore. The first 2 shot very well at around 1~1.25 MOA, and chronographed 2839 f/s and 2627 f/s respectively . . pretty close to advertised. The blue box stuff didn't group well, at around 2.5 MOA and was clocking about 2720 if I remember correctly.
In short I think I pretty closely concur with what prm has said above, and I would suggest he's probably more methodical than I am, and hence offers sound advice. I tend to favour bullets of 200/210 grains in the Fed. ( for no good reason, other than they seem about right when comparing SD,s and BC,s) If I think I may need a bit more reach I'll take my 7RM or .30-06 with lighter faster bullets. Having said that, let me say that there is no flies on the 210 Scirocco II in this regard and if I was to again hunt moose and elk in BC, I would elect to use this. At 2690 f/s ahead of 43g of Benchmark 2 it shoots inches flatter, and is far less effected by wind than any other 338 bullet I've tried. I fired 12 shots at a steel gong at 410 ranged yards that I thought was the size of a bread and butter plate, and was surprised when I hit it 9 times. I was even more surprised when I walked up for a look, and found it was only the size of a CD! ( If I sound elated by this, it's because I'm a pretty lousy shot most of the time).
I have found the 200g Accubond to be a very devastating and reliable bullet on deer-sized game, and pushed along by a stout load of either Benchmark 2 or Win 748 I get good accuracy, and 2670 f/s is easily obtainable. Both the afore-mentioned bullets are however, sleek and long, and tend to gobble-up a lot of powder space. More-so since I find they both tend to be more accurate with a good bit of jump.
I hate mucking around with highly compressed loads, and have almost always found flat-based bullets shoot more accurately (in my rifles anyway), and all those sexy sharp points and boat-tails really only start to show gains beyond 250 yards. So I've tended to edge back to the more conventional bullets. I've tried 200g Speer Hotcore, 200g Hornady Spire Point ( and SP-RP version ). All shot very accurately, and all bar the SP-RP, would be fine for my purposes. The "recoil-proof" version of the Hornady shot very accurately, but didn't open-up on light framed deer unless heavy bone is hit. No doubt they'd be okay at magnum velocities. However, the "do-all" bullet I have adopted ( for the mean-time), is the home-grown 200 g Woodleigh Weldcore PP. As stated in a previous post, I'm loading this bullet in Fed.338 head-stamped cases with Fed 210 m primers and 44g of Benchmark 2 for an MV in the mid 2600's. What I like about this load most is that the MV and POI seems to be the same every time I drag the rifle out of the bag whatever the ambient temp. Something that I couldn't say for the Win 748 loads though they produced significantly higher velocities ( 2751 f's). Significantly the Woodleighs are designed for .338-06/.338 Fed velocities with a thinner jacket towards the nose and being bonded, will retain about 80% or more up close, and open reliably down to 1900 f/s.
As I'm nearly out of BM-2, I'm currently swapping to Benchmark 8208 which, so far,is proving to be just more of a good thing as others have found. Velocity and accuracy are excellent with the added benefit that it appears to be very clean burning. So for the mean-time, I think I'll be staying with the 200g Woodleigh and 8208!
. . . but, I haven't tried any of those Barnes monometals yet. Some on here seem to be singing their praises. Maybe that should be my next project!!
Sorry for the looong post.
Cheers, John