Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Boat Tail vs Flat Base Bullets

Any opinions? Seems boat tail bullets would have higher ballistic coefficients. On the other hand, I've read flat base have less of a muzzleblast cloud escaping the barrel and going around the bullet. The application would be an 18" barrel AR10 and "urban critter" range targets (if it comes to that).

Won’t make much difference. Edk

At that point anything cheap you can load thousands of would be my choice.

Unless it a long range application, no need to worry, just load and shoot what is most accurate in your rifle.

That's kind of what I was thinking too. Can't imagine a target much outside 300 yards in an urban type setting. I'm thinking of something like a 110 VMAX, light, fast, flat shooting, and pretty much 100% fragmentation in the target. If I need something for more of a barrier target, I have tons of heavier GMX type rounds already.

^^^^^^ This

AR10 as in 308?
If so what is the twist, 110, may be to light/short.

FB is supposed to be more tolerant of an imperfect crown/easier to get to shoot really well, but it probably doesn’t make much of a difference.

I'm not exactly sure what urban critter range is. Across the driveway? Couple blocks? I'm going to imagine you're saying 200-300 yards or less.

I wouldn't worry about it in that application. The obvious use for boattails is for higher retained velocity and less wind drift for longer range shooting. If that was what I was after, the first thing I'd do is go with a longer barrel to get the most velocity possible from the case .. after that, then I'd figure out how to hang onto that velocity. For short and medium range, either will do well enough so the separating factor should be accuracy. Figure out roughly what weight you want to shoot, find a really good (and available!!) boat tail and a really good (and available!!) flat base and run up a few loads with each to see what your gun prefers.

Theoretically I suppose there could be some difference in muzzle blast but I've sure never noticed it. I would not let that sway my choice.

G' luck!!

Tom

MRI was good, but he had a mild heart attack. He doesn't want them to do the stint, fixing to go talk to him.

Good luck

Oh sorry to hear that Roger. I'm sure you meant to post this in your other thread. I actually had a stint 10 years ago and have been fine since. A little piece of plaque broke off and caused a clot. It's a common procedure now days.

For the reasons stated above, in general, flat base bullets will produce better groups at less than 300 yards, and on average, it's easier to find a good load with FB's. Beyond 300 is where BT's shine.

This is also what I’ve experienced, although I’ve found the difference to be so insignificant I don’t worry about it, and generally buy whichever is cheapest/ available.

You already know this.
Play around with different ones.
See what the wpn likes for a good accurate hard hitting mook load.

Dead mook... aint gonna make a diff to his non O2 consuming anymore azz...
😁😁😁😁😁

That 110gr V-Max or the 95gr equivalent in 6.5mm practically explodes inside the target and makes bio pudding.

Intriguing question.

Set out a few cans of White Claw at about 100 yards for bait. You won't need the boattails then.

Or fohties.

Depending on what type of hood you are operating in.

I'm not sure baiting them is legal.

JakeBlues;
Good evening to you sir, I hope the day's been a good one for you and you're well.

Since the BT vs Flat Base has been covered, I'll offer a few experiences with lighter bullets in various .308" cartridges - after all, I'm not BC30cal for nothing....

When the Canadian ammo maker Imperial went out of business, I ended up with "a whole bunch" of their 110gr spitzer bullets.

I proceeded to load them in a .308 Carbine, 21" '06 and a couple of .308 Normas to see what we could see.

What we saw was they'd group fine out to 100yds and then not one of our rifles would group dependably beyond that. Not minute of crow or marmot which were still legal for us to shoot back then.

The other odd thing that I noted was that when we went up to 130gr HP Speer and 125gr Ballistic Tips, they were about as fast as the 110gr, but would group reasonably well out to roughly 300yds if it wasn't a howling wind.

The 130gr Speer were absolute grenades when they'd land on a marmot or crow. It was one of those things one needed to investigate in person to wrap one's head around.

About that time I built a .22-250AI and all varminting activities with the .308" rifles ceased then and there.

Actually I still have some 125gr Ballistic Tips loaded in the .308 Norma that chronoed at 3490fps!!! That'd be an anti-fence climber combination from the dark side I'd suspect, you know?

Anyways sir, maybe it was our rifles and perhaps it was that lot of bullets, but I quit trying to send them fast and loaded most of the rest of them at about 900fps with 231 for close range plinking.

Hope that was useful for you or someone out there in the ether space tonight. Lets hope we don't ever need to try the fence climber ammo out.

All the best.

Dwayne