Home Forums Reloading Varmint Rifles 60 Grain Nosler BT

Folks ,
Wondering if anyone is using Nosler 60 grain Ballistic Tips in a 20” - 7.7 twist .223 AR ?
The barrel is a Krieger VARMATCH and It shoots 65 to 77 fine . Longer bullets seem to shoot Varget or CFE 223 with accuracy. But I’ve not shot any of these shorter BT and they seem like they would be good for ground hogs ?

Thank you in advance for your time and consideration.
Soup

Soup ?

Try some 53 gr V max....BC is high & they are long......

Have never used the 60 BT's....I run 55 BTs in my heavy 223AI

your quick twist will work well up to _________

throat length ?

of course your SMK's may not expand on G/hogs....

Soup,

Put some H335 behind them and lite it with a CCI 450's. It will chew them up.

Poobah slows them down with a light load of 4895 for killing yotes.

52gr SMK's also work great on prairie dogs. Great "flip factor". The heavier match bullets, well, not so much. They don't expand well enough for my liking.

Havent found any rifle that didnt like them so far. Ive used them on game- NOT a game bullet IMO- but yes, slowed down to about 2700 it is perhaps my favorite fur load. Also use 4064 for a fur combo....Souped up they are an excellent colony varmint bullet, and buck the prairie winds here pretty well...

For most of what Ingwe said on the 60 Btip....is why I've only shot a box or two of them....
compared with the performance and the price of Hornady's 60 grain SP.. I burn up thousands of them each year... they are less than $15 a box here locally, always available... I have found them more accurate, in either fast or slower velocity than the Nosler 60 grain Ballistic Tips...

I've been noticing of late, Hornady's garden variety SPs seem to be more accurate than the plastic tip bullets of both Nosler and Hornady manufacture....don't know what's up with that....but same bullet weight, and same powder and charge, same primer etc...at 100 yds at the range where I can measure the results, the old lead tipped SPs have been turning in tighter and smaller groups...

either tolerances on the lead tip SPs is getting tighter or the plastic tips are getting sloppier...

side note #2... 60 gr.ballistic tips need to slowed down to about 2700 MV to be used for bigger game such as deer... the 60 grain Hornady SP doesn't seem to need to....2900 to 3100 out of a bolt action, seems to work just fine on deer....loaded up some for several buddies, who are disabled military vets....and each one had success distances from 50 yds off the back porch, to up to 200 or so out in the field...

60 grain VMax do what the 60 grain BTs do and they do it for less $$.

I have pretty much settled on the 60 grain Partition for deer and the 60 grain VMax for all other uses. They shoot to approximately the same POA in all of the 1-9", and 1-12" ROT 0.224" bore rifles that I've shot them from. They don't seem to shoot as well in some 1-14" 0.224" bore rifles. I hate to say that their performance is "hit or miss", but that seems like an accurate reflection of the situation. The 60 grain Partition is one of two Partitions that has frustrated me and taken a little extra effort to find accurate loads for, the other being the 125 grain 0.264" Partition.

What are you pushing your VMAX’s with?

I’ve shot a lot of them, they will kill pigs fine, should kill ground hogs with ease.

Yup lots of them, just paper punching for me though. Been working with CFE 223 and I can't get 5 rounds into under 1 moa on a consistent basis. Tried 4 different primers & a number of powder charges from -3.0 grains on up to maximum.

I've moved on to Varget, just starting the process now and will sacrifice some speed for accuracy.


41

Varget is getting me just under 1 moa with the 60 grainer. Have to run it near maximum @ the 26.5 grain loading to get the speed & accuracy I want out of it. It's a compressed load, which is fine with me. Seems stable and quite consistent from shot to shot.

I really don't think a guy can get too much Varget in a reworked 5.56mm case to get in trouble.

41

I'd really look hard at Varget for 60s. I've used it under 60s and 62s of various makes and profiles, not a stiff load (26.1 plus or minus a tenth). But it's the most accurate powder with that weight in 223 for me, by enough to notice. Excellent on coyotes.

Accurate powder choices for the 223 ( in a bolt action) is pretty much endless...

about any of them will give me pretty much minute of a quarter to half dollar at 100 yds all day long..
even on high mileage barrels...

as I have said, its harder to pick a bad powder for a 223, than it is to pick one that really blows the rest away.

a 223, is kinda like an old VW.... or the old VW Rabbit diesels...they'll run on about anything.