Those of you who have factory .340 Weatherby Mark V rifles, how accurate do you find them to be, with either handloads or factory ammo?

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Originally posted by Alberta Canuck:
Those of you who have factory .340 Weatherby Mark V rifles, how accurate do you find them to be, with either handloads or factory ammo?

With factory ammo, a little better accuracy than the .338 WM. I'd be comfortable with either on a hunt.

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Originally posted by cobra:
With factory ammo, a little better accuracy than the .338 WM. I'd be comfortable with either on a hunt.

Any guesstimate as to what size groups you are getting with it from the sighting bench?

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Originally posted by Alberta Canuck:

quote:

Originally posted by cobra:
With factory ammo, a little better accuracy than the .338 WM. I'd be comfortable with either on a hunt.

Any guesstimate as to what size groups you are getting with it from the sighting bench?

On a good day anywhere between 3/4" to a little over an inch. My son gets 3/4" routinely.

Thank you very much. That's about what I expected.

Now, I'll lay bare my hidden agenda in asking this question.

My wife has been under the weather, so I've been lying about the house re-reading a number of books. Am currently reading for the umpteenth time the Wolfe book titled "Big Bore Rifles and Cartridges".

There are a lot of articles in there by all sorts of well known folks, including the late Bob Hagel.

He notes that the Weatherby "long throat" in the .340 Wby is actually a 3/8" long freebore.

That set me to wondering how much my previous occasional passion for increasing accuracy by having probably no more than 0.015' bullet jump to the lands is anchored in actual "accuracy truth", and how much of it is B.S. fostered by anecdotal (non-scientifc) evidence.

Then I recalled that one of my most accurate hunting rifles is a .300 Weatherby with at least that much freebore. It shoots "first-3-shots-from-a-cold-bore" 100 yard groups from 3/8 to 3/4" quite reliably.

So, now I think I may have my answer. Close to land bullet seating is NOT necessarily the way to good accuracy in all loads or cartridges. Other things probably more important come into play.

Would you agree, or do you have an insight I've missed?

(Of course, that is assuming your rifle and mine are not big exceptions to the rule. I wonder what accuracy other .340 Wby shooters are getting from their factory barreled and chambered Mark V rifles?)

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Close to land bullet seating is NOT necessarily the way to good accuracy in all loads or cartridges. Other things probably more important come into play.

I use to have a very accurate Kimber Pro Varmint in .204 Ruger. It was a constant 0.5 MOA rifle with my handloads.

There was no way in hell I could even touch the lands with the bullets (39gr Sierra Blitzkings). I spent alot of time putting my handloads together carefully and the runout always averaged around .002. Thanks in part to a great set of Redding Competition neck dies.

So Its exactly as you say.

Had a large batch of .308, 110 grain, carbine bullets that shot under an inch at 100 yds. consistently in a number of my rifles. There was no way the bullets got close to the rifling. roger

I believe Phil at KDF did a test one time in Wby calibers, with and without freebore, and there was no measurable difference. The results may depend somewhat on what bullet is used.

One rifle does not a rule make. With that stated, I own and have owned a number of calibers in the very accurate Sako TRG-s (7mm STW, .338 Win, .375 H&H, .416 Rem, and .340 WBY). The only one of the lot that didn't exhibit guilt-edged accuracy was the .340, so I traded it off.

I don't necessarily attribute the lack of (relative) accuracy of that rifle to its caliber, but in general, the radiused shoulder and long freebore are not as conducive to good accuracy as a normal angle shoulder junction and short freebore.

It is true that accuracy can improve when the bullet jump to the lands is increased, but this likely has more to do with harmonics than with the jump itself.

There is no reason that the Weatherby pattern of radiused shoulders and long freebore can't produce and accurate load/rifle, but you won't find any benchrest guns configured this way, so I infer from that that the benchrest crowd which will try (and has tried) everything has determined that long freebore and radiused shoulders are at least a bit disadvantageous when striving for best accuracy.

None of this is to say that you can't have a .340 WBY that shoots better than you can see.

I had a MK IV Wby in 340. It shoot good with factory 210, and 250 Nosler Partitions.
I have had several MK IV Weatherbys.
A 257, a 300, the 340, and a 416. I have shot others as well.
They all functioned fine and were plenty accurate.

For roughly the past 2 years I have quit worrying about seating off the lands in any of my rifles as I can't notice it making all that much difference in any of them.

I have a 22-250 in a M-70 Win. Coyote SS medium bull barrel, as it was called by Winchester, that will group under 1" @ 100 yards and right at or under 1-1/4" @ 200 yards on any given day any number of times. However it will only do it with 2 types of bullets. Because of the partitioned magazine box, I can not get any where close to the lands.

Also have a .338 WM in a Tikka T-3 with same setup (short magazine/long throat) that has been very accurate.

I am finding out more and more if all other things are equal, it is the condition of the barrel with regards to consitant even fouling AND, as Stonecreek said; "harmonics" that make the most difference in accuracy.

I have a 30-06 SS factory barrel that will group at MOA @ 200 yds. shot after shot if I clean with Butch's in between each shot. If I don't it will progressively open up and start to get erratic.

IMO seating close to the lands is like putting headers on a street rod. It is a step in the right direction but with out all of the other tweaking it don't do much 'cept make you feel good.

Forgot to mention my 250-3000 in Savage 16 Weatherwarrior.
I shot it this past weekend in preperation for a up-coming trip to my deer lease for a coyote hunt in Webb county.
Not sure exactly how far off the lands it is but I know it is not very close. It shot 7 shots in succession at 200 yards. All were in 1-5/8" group. Barrel was pretty toasty too as it was over 101 degrees in the shade.
This rifle doesn't seem to care what I push through it. It just plain flat shoots good.

AC, the bullet against the lands passion is anchored in 1970's bench rest shooting. At the time the fad was to have so little neck tension you could seat start the bullets in the case neck with your fingers, then seat the bullet against the lands when you closed the action. The theory had more to do with uniformly seating the bullets in relation to the chamber then it did with seating depth, but it mutated into the close to the lands theory for hunting rifles. Now I'm not saying the theory is wrong, but like you, I have several rifles that shoot tiny groups with .25 to .30" of freebore. I won't win any benchrest matches with them, but they can sure bring home the venison.

Yeh, true enough. I have won a bunch of bench rest matches by using a "zero tolerance" neck too....that is, one where there is NO clearance between the loaded round and the walls of the chamber...in fact where there is a little tiny bit of pressure applied against neck walls of the loaded round by the chamber neck walls.

Of course, that technique is absolutely & terribly dangerous if the ammo isn't virtually perfect in its dimensions. The shooter also has to be long experienced, so he automatically senses something is wrong if the bolt doesn't feel just right as he closes it on the loaded round, and he must be self-disciplined enough to stop right then EVERY TIME when the bolt closing feel isn't just right.

You can actually get to the point where you can tell in advance if the shot will go low or high on the BR target by the feel of the bolt closing on a less than correct round, when you are using a zero tolerance approach.

I used it only in cast bullet benchrest matches. In my opinion it is too dangerous for jacketed bullet matches, no matter how experienced or careful the shooter is, or how perfect the ammo.

That approach is also always absolutely useless in the hunting fields .

Anyway, I broached the subject here to see what others have experienced with rounds where the bullets are seated nowhere near the lands.

Thanks for all your experiences, so far.

My .340 Wby is the cheap Sporter Model that has more dents and scratchs than the old back sceen door. I has been all over North America and Canada with me. I seat my bullet as far as my magazine will let me and always have. I get one hole groups (3 shots touching) with North
Fork 225 and 240 grain bullets and Barnes XLC 225 grainers when I do my part from the backside. RL-19 and RL-22 are my magic powders with Fed 215M primers. A deadly combination on Moose and Elk. Good shooting.

I only have experience with one 340- it was built on a 98 action with a Douglas XX barrel, I used a Clymer off the shelf reamer. It will shoot 250gr Sierra BT SP bullets at 2900fps 3 shot groups between .5 and 1" consistently. The customer uses it for his long range buck shooter. Having to have a bullet touching or .010 off is an extremly overrated issue for someone standing waving in the wind or leaning across a tree for a shot at an unkown distance with no known wind velocities.

If you get a in. out of it I think youll do real well. Ive got a Mk.5 .257 tried alot of different loads and 2in. is about all I can get. The recoil on a .340s gonna enter into it. Good luck

I have the synthetic, matt finished MK V sporter. Pretty beat up at this point. It's been all over the Rockies, Alaska, and Africa.

As long as I keep the barrel completely clean of copper, it shoots about 3/4" at 100 yrds with 225 TSX at 3000fps.

Recoil is pretty stiff in this caliber so for me, the key to good performance with the rifle is practice, practice, practice!