What round for .308

[Cypher]

Get a book for each of the powders and bullets you'll be using. Most of these companies have data online now.

I like to seat close to lands and work back until I find a sweet spot. As for powder Hodgdon, IMR, Ramshot, and Reloader are the most common with several different offerings. You'll have to play with them to find the best one. On primers, I like the CCI BR2 but Winchester WLR and Rem 9 1/2 work well.

Just be patient on the hording and panic buying of supplies. It will all settle down after a while.

Awesome thanks for all the help!

[CharlieNC]

Varget is quite popular for the 308 and I like it for 6BR and 223 as well; as mentioned Hodgdon has a thorough on-line loading resource you can access. If you want to invest more, Quick Load software is very nice and offers search functions to id all powders and grains to match a given pressure, velocity, etc; personal and published experience is the calculated velocities are very accurate too.

[acemisser]

my 30 inch with 1 -10 prefeers the 200 grain or the 190's at 800 yards..Sierra brand that is

[thermaler]

Speaking of differences between manuals--I'm loading some Barnes TTSX 168 and 180 Accubonds with IMR 4064 ; measured CBTO they are almost the same length (I'm doing about 2.265 for a .03 jump off lands in my axis 308). The Nosler manual clearly states 104% compressed load at 44 gr--while the Barnes manual says nothing but max load at 46 gr. I know the long cut leaves a bit of room for compression--but I stopped the Barnes at 44 because I could clearly feel the pressure difference building when mounting the bullet. I know that bullet is going well past the shoulder inside the case--even though I'm seating the bullet long compared to "normal" factory COAL. I don't feel confident enough to push compressed loads at this point.

[beartooth91]

Here are the old and current .308 service match loads. I bet most .308's shoot these well.
M852 Match Load: Sie 168 Match King 42.0 gns IMR4895
M118 LR Load: Sie 175 Match King I believe the powder was 44.3 gns RL-15; this was reduced to 43.1 gns in late '03 or early '04
Mk316 Mod 0 Load: Sie 175 Match King 41.75 gns IMR4064; rumor is the current Federal Gold Metal Match Load uses this.

The Sierra 175 Match King was developed as the 168 MK groups were opening up beyond 800 yards as the bullet's velocity dropped. It was felt the 175's design would overcome this. If you have the time, there's a few articles which show the history of the service cartridge match loads and their development.
http://riflemansjournal.blogspot.com/2012/02/cartridges-762-nato-long-range-match.html
http://riflemansjournal.blogspot.com/2012/02/cartridges-762-nato-long-range-match_04.html
http://riflemansjournal.blogspot.com/2010/04/history-us-national-match-ammunition.html
Links 2 and 3 provide the most info for the .308.

[thermaler]

The off-the-shelf 175 gold match shoots very well out of my rifles, but I can't find the bullets anywhere nor any powder, though I have a bit of 4064 and varget left. I have to content myself with 180 gr accubond for the >168 gr bullet loads --but I'm not sure how much range it needs to stabilize well for good groupings, and I'm limited to 100 yds for the time being.

[mag41vance]

This is a Target from my 12FV .308

It shoots 178 Amax very well as well as 155gr Nosler J-4 (both with Varget)

http://www.hunt101.com/data/500/double.JPG