338 COAL

[jonnybullslayer]

Hi all,
I've been perusing this forum for about a month now and it is awesome! I decided to join a couple of weeks ago and this is my first post.

I've been suddenly afflicted with the long range bug and I want to lob some lead with my savage 116 338 win mag. My question is this:
What is the highest weight, highest bc bullet that I can load that will still allow me to use my rifle as a repeater (no single shot!)? I've measured the inside of the magazine and come up with 3.470" if it were touching on both ends. I've tried searching the web, but most results for for 250 and up are for 338 lapua. It looks like hornady makes a 250 and 285, and supposedly berger is making 338 bullets but I can't find info on their site. Any ideas?

Thanks,

JB

[helotaxi]

Hornady doesn't publish load data for their 285gn for the .338 Win Mag. Probably because it isn't terribly well suited for it. To seat it to mag length, which I think you could do, you'd end up with so much bullet in the case that powder capacity would seriously suffer and so would velocity. The velocity loss would probably more than offset the increase in BC compared to the 250gn pill. I've got a feeling that is going to be the case with any bullet heavier than the 250. With a .670 BC, the 250gn HPBT isn't exactly a slouch.