The barnes bullets seem to produce fine accuracy, but I'm wondering why a lot of guys say you need to run them way off the lands (.100"+). I've tried from .025" - .100" off and find that I achieve better accuracy/precision with the bullet closer to the lands (.025" off). You say you've ran a lot of Barnes bullets, is there a sweet spot for most Barnes bullets? In terms of seating depth and distance off the lands, or jump as some guys call it.... I'll admit, I'm new to Barnes bullets, as I usually use partitions, Hornady interlocks, Sierra GK, and WW power points on big game. Finally decided to give in and give the Barnes a try..
I’ve shot a lot of Barnes in a bunch of rifles, and 0.050” off the lands nearly always gives excellent results.
I’ve not had a Barnes really shoot till it’s .050 off and quite often .075-.100” has been better in a number of rifles.
Not saying you’re not getting fine accuracy, but I usually get one outta the group till I sink them a bit deeper.
Lots of folks report seating to the middle of the top groove and getting pretty good results as well. I’d tend to agree with that as that’s about where I’ve ended up with a few.
Thanks guys. Not to side track the thread, but when I tried the loads seated at .050", they were bigger. I found decent nodes at .025 and .100" off. Maybe I need to try .125"+ off?
At .100" off, they look like this:
Another .025" deeper and it would be right to the edge of the ring. Roughly. I could try "middle of the top groove", like Scotty suggested? That would probably be somewhere around .150" off the lands.
Groups were kind of weird. First 3 shots were sub 1/2 moa and the next 2 out for both .025 and .100" off lands. Here's the .025" off group:
Here's the .100" off the lands group:
.025" off the lands with CCI 200 primer:
Seems like the magnum primer is making tighter groups, but double grouping... In most cases with C&C bullets, you seat deeper if you are getting double groups. Are the mono's the same? If you guys think seating deeper will produce better precision, I'll give that a try. Thanks for the help..
I'm hunting with the .025" off the lands and CCI 250 load this week. Will be good enough for elk, but I think I can wring more precision out of it.. I also have 4 boxes of the 140gr TSX to experiment with too, so I may play around with that bullet and see if it acts the same as the TTSX..