While I was at the airport a few minutes ago I came across an article in the Sep Shooting Times where
the author decided to do some field testing with spitzers, boattails and round nose bullets. At 300 yrds
the drop difference between all three was less than 2 " closer to one and in some cases identical. Neat story
The drop figures in various reloading manuals were not even close to real life. I have also been reading something somewhere about how the lead tip on a high velocity bullet is burned off
during flight - maybe why the "actual" drop figures are not so far apart - However, if I remember
right some of the bullets tested were NBT's - go figure - any body else tried this - the author
advocated using more blunt nose bullets because they expand better on impact - I know in my
experience the absolute fastest kill were with 117 nosler semi-spitzers in a 25-284 and 175 gr Nosler
semispitz in a 7MM Mashburn - both bullets no longer in production - I'm currently working on
developing a load for a 270 with 160 gr nosler semispitz - one of only two bullets left in the partition line - the
other being a 200 gr 30 cal.

I read the article and found it amazing. I have no doubt that the bullets performed as was written. It was any eye opener when a round nose had only 1-2" less drop at 300 yds than a match king. My only explanation is that the matchking might have been "wobbling" its way to the target and had a "real life" coefficient that was alot worse than published. I'm beginning to believe its the way your gun spits a particular bullet out that really drives ballistic coeficient and not published figures. It's all interesting a proves how badly WE MUST TEST BULLETS/LOADS at various ranges and NOT USE BALLISTIC CHARTS.

Gun magazines were few and far between until the late 1950's and early '60's, at which time the post-war booming economy newly-prosperous WW II former GI's started getting serious about the shooting sports (and print media publishing became much more lucretive).

So now we've had over 40 years of gun writers rehashing the same material ad nauseum, to the point of writing patently absurd articals just in order to try to say something different.

A round nose bullet might very well strike within an inch or two of a spitzer at 300 yards with the same sight setting, but to make a valid comparison of trajectories you'll have to stipulate what the impact point of each was at 100 yards.

The myth of bullet noses "burning" off in flight harks back to a 1970's edition of the Speer reloading manual when some of the early (very fuzzy) stroboscopic photos of a bullet in flight seemed to show a rounded nose on what was a spitzer when it entered the chamber. Speer used these photos to justify its then-new Mag-Tip design, even though Speer didn't go so far as to claim ballistic co-efficients for the Mag-Tips equal to spitzers. Better technology soon gave us crystal-clear photos of bullets in flight with absolutely pristine noses (photos so clear you could see the rifling engraving).

Now one gun "writer" with nothing else to talk about has decided that 130 years of military research and theory in projectile design has all been wrong. Give us all a break.

Yeah, that 2" difference at 300 will be even moreso at 400 and beyond. Good point about the zero if that wasn't mentioned in the article. Rifles behave differently with different components. Maybe the bearing surfaces were different between the bullets tested as well as many other potential variable. One bullet may come out at a different point during the barrels vibration which will very much affect the point of impact when comparing to another load.

Do this little experiment if you can. Load up the same bullet type to the same velocity using two different types of powder. It may seem that they should show the same amount of drop. Indeed, sometimes they do, but sometimes they don't. The act of setting off the powder charge between two different powders is going to affect barrel dynamics and potentially affect the time at which the bullet departs the barrel. Depending on where the barrel's "whip" is at that time the bullet will impart differing flights.

Cool stuff nonetheless.

Reed

Woe dude ! I've read lots of magazines for years too - thats why I thought this article was unique and kid of refreshing - I believe that the guns were all sighted to the same point - in fact I think it was straight drop out the shoot - something like minus 12-15" at 300 yds. But its good to know that my lead is still pointed.

Hmm, interesting. What round was being tested?

I used to be a big boattail advocate but anymore I think the benefit is negligible at best.

I have tested all of my loads against noslers trajectory charts(I use ballistic tips)and found them to be quite accurate out to 500 yards for my 7mmstw's and 300ultramags.I do have a chronograph so the velocities used against the charts were accurate.I have however found large discreptancies with some of the other manuals with some of the other bullets I have tried over the years.

I'd certainly like to see more articles like this than "Shooting the latest WSM"-type articles. As un-scientific as it was, at least he did something interesting. And he acknowledge that it wasn't all that scientifically performed.

With the altitude and the angle to the 300 yd target, all bullets will shoot flatter making the differences between them smaller. A test at 400 or 500 yds would have been better. Also, there isn't much use in comparing a spitzer boattail of one brand to the spitzer of another since the boattail contributes much, much less to the bullet's BC than the ogive and meplat.

The biggest difference should have come with the 220's. From the results it's pretty obvious a 1 in 10 twist barrel launching the bullet at only 2500 fps was not adequate to stabalize the MatchKing properly. The even tiniest bit of wobble will be detrimental to a bullet's BC.

Anyway, I agree with his conclusions pretty much...if you think 300 yds is a really, really long shot you probably don't need to worry about BC's all that much. On the other hand, if you do shoot well beyond 300.... But whatever else you do, there is no substitute for actually shooting your rifle at those ranges to see what your load really does.

I also liked the article by Rick Jamison a while ago where he actually measured the BC's of many different hunting bullets. No surprizes there, the plastic tipped boattails stomped the semi-spitzer types.

FWIW, computer generated charts can be very accurate when the bullets advertised BC is realistic and environmental factors are figured in. My drop chart for the 240 SMK in my 300 RUM was on the money out to 700 yds. But again, I only know that because I actually shot the gun at a target that far away.

[ 08-14-2002, 07:44: Message edited by: Jon A ]

When shooting any weight bullet at the same given velocity, the main factor to bullet drop is resistance to the air as it passes through. Simple physics, gravity works at the same rate, regardless of bullet weight, leaving drag as the only determining factor.
If your shooting at a live animal over three hundred yards, stop it.
Learn how to get closer or pass up the shot. I've taken antelope with flintlocks and pistols during general season, and know there is usually a way to get closer, if you don't mind getting out of the pick up and putting in some "belly time". Bighorn sheep I have found generally very easy to get in rock throwing range of.