Lazy, hazy, crazy daze of Summer!






Boar #1

270 Winchester, !30 gr. Accubonds +/- 125 yds.
Two leaky holes. DRT





Boar #2

My first AR upper Build. 338 Federal, 185 gr. Hornady GMX, +/- 90 yds.
Two leaky holes. DRT






ya!


GWB

Looks like you are enjoying summer.

The Pig Perforator is at it again! Well done, my friend.

What velocity are you running that 185 GMX at, and what did the internals look like?

Nice! I'm curious about the GMX too. My wife and daughter shoot/share a Ruger Hawkeye in .338 Fed. Right now we're burning through 100 rounds of factory ammo, but soon I'll reload and the 185-class monometals are on my radar.

Nice hogs and nicer rifles!

quote:

Originally posted by Bobby Tomek:
The Pig Perforator is at it again! Well done, my friend.

What velocity are you running that 185 GMX at, and what did the internals look like?

My wife and kids always get mad, as it seems I can never give a simple concise answer to a simple question.

So to make a short story long…………

As you probably know, I've not jumped on the AR-15 bandwagon. I am not a stunt shooter and typically do not shoot hogs with calibers with diameters less than .264.

I do not particularly like the way they balance or carry. I do not like the mag sticking down and in the way. However, my son started building AR's and he has them through 5.56 up to the 450 Bushmaster. Some of the ones he's built are as accurate as my best bolt guns. Amazing.

Earlier this year I purchased an Armalite AR-10 in 308 Win., and I like it. My son built a 338 Federal a year or so ago and it flat works.

However, the only two chamberings/cartridiges I swore I'd never own again was the 243WSSM and the 338 Federal. My first experience with the 338 Federal was with the only Sako I could never get to shoot. My first would not group consistently and I took it back to Carter's country and they switched it out for a second, which also would not shoot.

Third, I had more trouble with the lot of brass that I had and it was horrible.

Fourth, if you look at the Nosler Manual, loads well below max are compressed loads. I am not a compressed load fan, especially with plastic tipped bullets.

Finally, the velocities that I was able to achieve were a good 200 to 300 FPS less than what Nosler published in their manual.


Despite that, considering my sons experience I decided to build an upper and give the 338 Federal a second try!



The barrel length is 18"

Here are the velocities I recorded on my initial trial. They are scant as during my trial run, the bolt would not cycle. The barrel is by Wilson Combat. Seems there are several different gas tube lengths. Std. carbine length gas tube is 13.625, and a non adjustable gas block should be fine on a 338 Federal. Turns out that Wilson Combat uses a proprietary carbine length gas tube of 13.25" and an adjustable gas block was in order.



As you can see, the Factory 185 grain AE Ammo was the hottest, but it shot the worst in my initial test, but those were the first shots through the barrel.

Next fastest was the 185 Gr. Accubonds. The first two were touching, but the third was a flyer.

The slowest was the GMX, but had the best grouping. I also had recently picked up two boxes of the 185 gr. GMX at $18 per box and that was what I wanted to try.

I loaded 45 gr. TAC for my initial trial of both the Accubonds and the GMX's. I chose TAC, as according to the Nosler Manual, TAC achieved about the highest velocity at the least compressed loading.




Considering the length of the GMX Bullet and the Max COAL of the MagPul magazine I thought TAC would be what I tried first. The Hornady manual shows that out of their 26" test barrel 45.7 gr. TAC derived 2,600 fps. The Wilson Combat barrel at 18" is 8" shorter. If you figure a velocity loss at +/- 30 fps per inch, that would be 240 fps, which would seem reasonable.

And it all came together. I got the right gas length tube, right gas block and loaded up 45.2 Gr. TAC for my second try. I zero'd the rifle at 100 using the GMX


The Hornady book says that the velocity range for the 185gr. 338 cal GMX is from 2,500-3,300 fps. Although slower by my chrony, it seemed to do fine. I'm not a long ranger shooter, and muzzle velocities of +/- 2,300 fps don't tear up a lot of meat.




Two holes.

It was 10:30 PM when I got back to camp. The bullet was a pass through. It was late, and I'd been on the go and in the heat since 7 AM that morning. I did not do a necropsy. I hung him up and took only the tenderloins. I did notice on the off-side tender at its terminus with the neck that there was a pretty good "hole".

I've only got about 20 rounds through the barrel, and I loaded up another 40 rounds. I may try the 180 gr. Accubonds once more just to see if I can get them to group, but I'm pretty happy with the way the GMX's performed.

Ya!


GWB

Good stuff there my friend.

.

Great info there, Geedubya. Many thanks!

Yeller hog looks different rolled over!

George

Get 'em Gdub. Nice to see some color variation in your hogs.