Range Report: Blue Dot, the .222 Remington and the .338 Win Mag

Finally made it to the range today, there are just too many hunting opportunities at the moment, the roe deer rut is just over, now the wild pigs do a lot of damage in the corn fields and need to be controlled.

I loaded the .222 with RWS cases, CCI SR primers and Sierra 50 grain SP bullets, the report is very low and the recoil barely noticeable, comparable to the Hornet:

9 grain 42 mm accuracy at 100 meters, strong vertical stringing
10 grain 42 mm, as above
11 grain 24 mm, nice grouping
12 grain 34 mm, as above

The 11 grain load shoots as precise as my current target load with N133 and will replace it most likely, still have to shoot the Running Boar to see if the lower velocity will show a bigger difference in POI on the target. The POIs out of my Anschutz rifle are in comparison to the full-power load about 80 mm to the right, with rapidly increasing height.

The .338 with 200 grain Nosler Ballistic Tips, CCI LR, RP cases out of a SS Ruger MK2 were as following:

32 grain 67 mm at 100 meters
34 grain 56 mm
36 grain 25 mm (!)

With RL19 and this bullet I couldn't get better results than about 55 mm. POI was low, about roughly 100 mm in comparison to the standard RL 19 load with 215 grain bullets. The 36 grain load is very promising and about as good as this gun shoots with lighter bullets. It should have enough knock-down power for roe deer and wild pigs, I calculated energy levels comparable to the old drilling's 8x57 IR which killed many, many red stag and pigs. To be carried around here the .338 is for my taste otherwise a little bit on the heavy side. Once I have the first results on game, I'll post them here.

Many thanks to sea fire for the good research and recommendations!

I took my 338 WM tikka out with some BD loads the other day also, I loaded 32, 34 and 36 grains with 200 grain NBT. The 36 grain load was by far the best for accuracy and shot 5 into slightly over an inch. I also load 200 grain NBT for deer, which I hope to try this fall, using 74 grains of I4350. When I set 36 Grains of BD to shoot dead on at 100 yards my regular deer load ends up just where I want it. Isnt life grand?



I was thinking about trying 37 and 38 grains but Im not sure if its necessary.

Have you ever loaded 22-250 with Blue Dot. If so, What was a good load? F.Y.I I've found that the old horn.spsx'es work great with my low vel. hornet loads.

Pressure update:

Someone did me the favour to run the 36 grain load through Quick Load with the following results:

3.654 bar pressure
698 m/s speed
3151 J energy at muzzle


Since according to CIP the maximum pressure for the 338 WM is 3700 bar and the calculated value might easily vary +/- 10%, I would under no circumstance go higher than the mentioned 36 grains of BD with this bullet.

The energy falls into the same class as the 7x57mm, 6.5x55mm or as mentioned the 8x57mm IR.

m/s WHAT THE HELL IS THAT? Your going to make me do the conversion to something I can visualize, GRRRRr....J/K

Thanks for the data

Sorry, for the metrically handicapped m/s is meters per second, to get fps just divide by 0.305, here 698 m/s translate into 2288 fps.

In this regard, even though this won't make me popular here, I still would like to mention the beauty and elegance of the mks-system (meter-kilogram-sekunde).