tic tips, BC and lobbing bullets out
to infinite.
Roughly 20 years ago, a book
came out that made quite an issue
of BC and trajectory in sporting ri-
fles. The author took it upon him-
self to beat me up in a column in
each issue of a now-defunct mag-
azine for a couple of years, owing
to a test I conducted with spitzer
and roundnose bullets of the same
weight at 300 yards in a .257 Rob-
erts, 6.5x55 Swede and 7x57mm
Mauser. At the time, all three were
available in factory loads with
roundnose bullets. All I had to
do was match factory velocities
with handloads using spitzers of
the same weight. My contention
was, and still is, groups formed
by pointy and roundnose bullets
would overlap, assuming the same
sight setting, if fired at the same ve-
locities at normal hunting ranges.
What my antagonist also failed
to acknowledge was that while
roundnose hunting bullets may
arrive at any given target with
slightly less velocity and energy
compared to their pointy coun-
terparts, they generally smack
the animal a scosche harder than
computers might suggest. Can
you spell “.30 WCF, .35 Remington,
.45-70, 9.3x62, .30-40, .375 H&H,
etc.”? Chances are, the iPhone-age
gun press has never fired any of
them, or old standards of similar
ilk, at big-game animals.
Since it appears that some
members of the gun press were
likely born after 1962, they are
probably unaware that the 7mm
Remington Magnum was intro-
duced in that year with a 175-grain
roundnose bullet. Those who have
to ask “Why?” have likely never
been faced with the south end
of a northbound elk in the heavy
timber country of Idaho, Oregon,
Montana, northern Arizona and
New Mexico, or just about any-
where else that big stands of
Douglas fir and/or Ponderosa pine
provide prime habitat for elusive
bulls.
The BC for the roundnose bul-
lets in my test were a bit lessJuly-August 2019 http://www.riflemagazine.com 7than .3 and the spitzers averaged
around .45 or so, and groups at 300
yards overlapped for three shots
with each bullet aimed at the
center of an 8-inch bull. None of
the 18 shots would have missed a
coyote-sized target.
As a follow up, my wife, Ro-
berta, took a trophy-class caribou
that now graces our living room
with her Ruger M77 6.5x55 Swed-
ish using a 160-grain Hawk round-
nose bullet in Canada’s Northwest
Territories.
So, by significant, we mean
choosing a BC between .35 and
.5 in hunting bullets is picking
nits, rarely enough to detect with
factory sporting rifles at prudent
hunting ranges on deer-sized or
larger game. It is vitally impor-
tant, however, to require min-
imal retained energy that is
appropriate for the game at hand
and the bullet of choice. All folks
have to pay attention to is whether
the discussion applies to target
or hunting rifles. They are rarely
the same. R