The nose profile is different. The 165's have a sharper straight taper to the tip while the 168's is like the standard profile. The 168's shoot really good in my 06 and although I have some 165's I have not tried them yet. Both are getting harder to find but I know where there are 2 boxes of 165's and 6 boxes of 168's. They had more but some are on my shelf now. I bought up what they had in the .338 185's for my 338-06 as well. The 338 caliber just can't be had any longer and the 30 cal. are drying up too.
Woody
Posts: 4115 | Location: Pa. | Registered: 21 April 2006
Agree w/ Woody. Since I work just up the road from and enlisted one of Barnes' employees a few months ago, I got to ask their tech's about the diffs between the 165/168's. The 165 profile was designed to work with 300 Win Mag's short magazine length.
You'll probably need to do some internet searches on Ebay, auctionarms, gunbroker and other reloading bases web sites to find any.
Posts: 1719 | Location: Utah | Registered: 01 June 2004
It will get hard to find the XLCs since Barnes is discontinuing most of them. You can buy them directly from their site. You might be able to find them at a place like Sportsman's Warehouse. For the most part, they are on their way out and TSXs are in.
Posts: 1 | Location: Eielson AFB, AK | Registered: 20 December 2006
