Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire ID this bullet

Friend.......my reply was meant in humor.....note the grinning face.

But to be accurate.....you did state that was what you load in your wife's 25/06 and the picture was of a Sierra bullet box-stock # 1835- which is .277 dia.

Maybe you should have stated that you load Sierra Gamekings in your wife's 25/06.
No harm......no foul.

I must have been reloading a long time then because I have lots of unlabeled and incorrectly labeled bullets I've picked up over the years at flea markets, estate sales, and from various friends and club members. Easy enough to weigh and measure a bullet, but beyond that the best tool is, as you say Ballistic Explorer with its graphical database of nearly 2000 bullets.

I don't think many people know what a graphical database is so here's a screen shot showing the selection of search values and the results. Being a real database with many key characteristics like Body, Tip, and Shape it's easy to narrow down the possibilities with a click of the search button to just two bullets using nothing but the OP's photo, and later, the weight and caliber he provided.



I also like how they display Sierra's multiple BC values, which I find better than trying to make sense of Sierra's written description. I noticed the upgrade from September 2011 includes the G7 BC for Berger and Lapua. I also use the Ammo search to compare factory ammo with my reloads to see what I can expect or to research a caliber I'm interested in adding to my collection.

Like you, I couldn't get along without Oehler's software and 35P. Besides identifying bullets, here's something I run into often.

My favorite factory loads are the Hornady light magnums, which due to Hornady's innovative mix of powders, achieves higher velocities than I can safely reload to. In particular, the highest velocity in the Hornady reloading manual for 308 Winchester with a 168 gr bullet is 2600 fps, but the Hornady light magnum factory load achieves 2840 fps with this same weight bullet and a BC of 0.436, so I use it for hunting sometimes as the flatter trajectory extends the range.

The question is, what zero range should I use to give the maximum range where the game is not giving me time to adjust for range and wind, but I want to place my shots within 6 inches of my aim point?

Lots of software will calculate Maximum Point Blank Range (MPBR), which would come out to 367.9 yards at my altitude with a zeroed range of 312 yards. I'm not falling for that as I want to include real world conditions of a cross wind of up to 15 MPH and the accuracy of a standing hurried shot of plus or minus 2.0 MOA. Only Ballistic Explorer lets me figure this out and the answer is a surprisingly short 158 yards.



From Ballistic Explorer's explore target display. The target is at 158 yards and red is for the 158 yard zero setting and green is the 312 yard zero setting. The circles are the 2 MOA aiming error I picked and the lines are the path of the bullet as if you were looking at a tracer round going down range away from you with a 15 MPH wind from the right. Had I zeroed at 312 yards than more than 60% of my shots would be outside the 6 inch zone by just 158 yards and by 312 yards 95% would by outside the 6 inch zone, unless of course there was no wind. I expect lots of hunters make the mistake of using an ideal MPBR given all the half baked and crippled software available on free websites and smart phones.