Savage Stealth Evolution .308 Ammo

ALCON,
I was wondering what everyone has found is the best ammo shot out of a stealth evolution? Brand and weight. Thanks and look forward to seeing what everyone has to say. Thanks Jim

Either the 168 or 175gr Federal Gold Medal Match

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Agree. It is the least expensive also. Other companies make match ammo and some of it is real good but the FGMM in 175 will give you some smaller groups if you do your part at the cost of a little more recoil.

I have been having EXCELLENT results with this stuff: Magtech CBC 168gr Sniper MT308D BTHP
https://www.surplusammo.com/products...50-rounds.html
I shoot it a little better than my FGMM 168gr.

Its cheap enough to try out. Also, Tula 165gr shoots 2 - 2.5 MOA out of mine. Also, cheap to try, and what I load up for friends or people at the range who want to try out my rifle. :D

I hesitate to give you a bullet weight recommendation.
I find that my Savage bolt action .308 Model 10s with the same length barrel have different bullet weight preferences when it comes to accuracy.
One likes 150/155 grain bullets best and shoots 168s almost as well.
The other likes 175 grain to 200 grain bullets best, shoots 168s OK and doesn't shoot 150.155 grains as accurately.
Two of my range buddies with Savage .308s have also seen bullet weight accuracy differences in their rifles.

I personally consider the FGMM to be the 'gold standard' of factory ammos for the .308 and now you can get it with Sierra SMK or Berger bullets and, I think, even Nosler Custom Competition bullets.
Nolser Custom Competition factory ammo is also a good choice and Black Hills makes good ammo as well.

Just try different bullet weights to see if you rifle has a weight preference.

As others have noted, Federal Gold Metal Match tends to be a favorite.

The 168s are good out to 800 yards or so, 175s a bit farther, but some guns like one better than the other at moderate range - so you need to test.

I shoot PPU 168s often, but they generally do not deliver the same accuracy as the GMM.

Some have worked up loads with Lapua Scenar 155s that do very well at max range, but some rifles with 1:10 twist don't care for them.

As stated above, some rifles prefer different weight bullets, even with same length barrel. I'd get a couple of boxes of Federal Gold Medal Match or Black Hills Match with different bullet weights to see what the rifle likes.

I have always preferred Sierra Match King bullets, but, Hornady ELD and Nosler match have been good for me as well.

Black Hills Match 168 or 175. The Federal GM 168 & 175 is also decent.

But I’d recommend investing in some reloading equip & rolling your own. Even your very basic reloads are going to quickly outshoot factory ammo. And it’s not as much as one might think to get in the ground floor of reloading.

What equipment would you recommend for getting into reloading? 308, 223/556, and possibly 6.5 in the future?

BigBabyMoses06,

It all depends upon what you are intending on reloading for and how much you will be reloading.
If you are only loading a few hundred rounds a year, you don't need much and your choices are pretty open.
No use spending thousands of dollars to buy equipment if you aren't intending to use it.

But you'll need at least one good caliper, dial or electronic, and some case prep equipment, like a hand primer, some hand held tools to de-burr case necks. Your reloading volume will dictate if you should buy hand held tools or a powered case prep station.
You'll also need some type of vibrator or tumbler to clean brass.

The Ammo and Reloading forum has lots of posts that will give you lots of opinions help you choose.

As for the choice of press, large volume competition shooting sometimes favors using a progressive press. They are generally more expensive and are more complicated to set up.
Smaller volumes for hunting or for shooting with more of an eye for accuracy, I would think a single stage press would be more appropriate because measurement and tuning are easier for each load and you will be probably doing more of that because of the small volumes.
If you are interested in long range precision shooting, I would also recommend a single stage press.
Since all of the calibers you listed are short actions, almost any good press would work.
However, if you intend to reload for long action cartridges, you'll need to consider presses that will handle the extra length so you can easily fit the brass and bullets into the press more easily.

I have loaded just about 50,000 rounds, mostly long and short action rifle rounds, in the last 9 years using a Redding Big Boss II single stage press, but I am anal about accuracy and tune every load for seating depth, trim length, exit time and temperature. I hand primed each load with a RCBS universal primer.

After a few years of loading over 5,000 rounds a year, I bought a cheap press just to deprime of my brass using a cheap Lee universal deprimer die - total cost of about $35 to save having to replace a more expensive, grit-worn sizing die. I saves me lots of time not having to switch out dies in a single stage press and keeps my good sizing dies from getting dirty when depriming and sizing used brass.

I have also migrated to using micrometer seating dies (Redding or Forster) for my most accurate rifles because I adjust depth by a few thousandths with each different load when tuning for temperature and variations in trim length.
Lots of people have no need for micrometer dies, especially if they tend to load the same bullets and loads at the same seating depth over and over again for each caliber.
I started with cheaper dies but learned that the micrometer dies fit my reloading techniques better.

I have been using a RCBS Charge Master 1500 to measure every one of the 50,000 loads. It was expensive but it has served me well and has paid for itself many times over.

I have recorded all my costs for reloading equipment over the years and it comes to over $2,400 without including the powder, bullets, brass and primers. That is the fixed cost of equipment.
I have recorded all my factory ammo costs for each caliber and my expendable costs for reloading as well.
Comparing the costs of premium factory match rounds and my reloaded match rounds I have 'saved' about $28,000 by reloading after subtracting the fixed equipment cost. That was paid for in the first 3,000 rounds.
Good match ammo costs about $1.20 a round and I am averaging just over $ 0.55 per reload for equivalent match loads.
I put 'saved' in quotes because it only means that I could spend the 'savings' on more expendables and load more ammo to shoot.
If I had shot only factory match ammo, I would have only been able afford to shoot less than half of the rounds I have actually reloaded.

There are lots of very experienced reloaders who contribute to the Ammo and Reloading forum who will help you with questions, once you figure out what kind of reloading you want to do.

I am not a precision reloader. 0.5MOA is good enough for me.

I have used Lee equipment almost exclusively for almost 40 years. Started with the Lee hand reloading kit. Very soon after I went to the original turret press. When it came out I ran the numbers on it for strength and found it about 10 times stronger than needed for any type of reloading work. I have two Lee presses now, a single stage and the Loadmaster progressive which is what I do all my reloading on. The single stage is for things like bullet sizing. I also had a Auto Breech Lock Pro, but, it would not do .308 length cartridges. And, yes, I have used RCBS and Lyman presses. They are stout, but, I have found no difference for my reloading needs.

I'd recommend a basic single stage press for most rifle use. If you are not going to get into precision long range or bench rest type stuff then the basic Lee Turret press will also work well.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by CFJunkie

BigBabyMoses06,

It all depends upon what you are intending on reloading for and how much you will be reloading.
If you are only loading a few hundred rounds a year, you don't need much and your choices are pretty open.
No use spending thousands of dollars to buy equipment if you aren't intending to use it.

But you'll need at least one good caliper, dial or electronic, and some case prep equipment, like a hand primer, some hand held tools to de-burr case necks. Your reloading volume will dictate if you should buy hand held tools or a powered case prep station.
You'll also need some type of vibrator or tumbler to clean brass.

The Ammo and Reloading forum has lots of posts that will give you lots of opinions help you choose.

As for the choice of press, large volume competition shooting sometimes favors using a progressive press. They are generally more expensive and are more complicated to set up.
Smaller volumes for hunting or for shooting with more of an eye for accuracy, I would think a single stage press would be more appropriate because measurement and tuning are easier for each load and you will be probably doing more of that because of the small volumes.
If you are interested in long range precision shooting, I would also recommend a single stage press.
Since all of the calibers you listed are short actions, almost any good press would work.
However, if you intend to reload for long action cartridges, you'll need to consider presses that will handle the extra length so you can easily fit the brass and bullets into the press more easily.

I have loaded just about 50,000 rounds, mostly long and short action rifle rounds, in the last 9 years using a Redding Big Boss II single stage press, but I am anal about accuracy and tune every load for seating depth, trim length, exit time and temperature. I hand primed each load with a RCBS universal primer.

After a few years of loading over 5,000 rounds a year, I bought a cheap press just to deprime of my brass using a cheap Lee universal deprimer die - total cost of about $35 to save having to replace a more expensive, grit-worn sizing die. I saves me lots of time not having to switch out dies in a single stage press and keeps my good sizing dies from getting dirty when depriming and sizing used brass.

I have also migrated to using micrometer seating dies (Redding or Forster) for my most accurate rifles because I adjust depth by a few thousandths with each different load when tuning for temperature and variations in trim length.
Lots of people have no need for micrometer dies, especially if they tend to load the same bullets and loads at the same seating depth over and over again for each caliber.
I started with cheaper dies but learned that the micrometer dies fit my reloading techniques better.

I have been using a RCBS Charge Master 1500 to measure every one of the 50,000 loads. It was expensive but it has served me well and has paid for itself many times over.

I have recorded all my costs for reloading equipment over the years and it comes to over $2,400 without including the powder, bullets, brass and primers. That is the fixed cost of equipment.
I have recorded all my factory ammo costs for each caliber and my expendable costs for reloading as well.
Comparing the costs of premium factory match rounds and my reloaded match rounds I have 'saved' about $28,000 by reloading after subtracting the fixed equipment cost. That was paid for in the first 3,000 rounds.
Good match ammo costs about $1.20 a round and I am averaging just over $ 0.55 per reload for equivalent match loads.
I put 'saved' in quotes because it only means that I could spend the 'savings' on more expendables and load more ammo to shoot.
If I had shot only factory match ammo, I would have only been able afford to shoot less than half of the rounds I have actually reloaded.

There are lots of very experienced reloaders who contribute to the Ammo and Reloading forum who will help you with questions, once you figure out what kind of reloading you want to do.

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I would very much like to know how you're keeping your reloading costs so low. After reading your 55 cent per round estimate, I went through the effort to calculate how much my 308 loads cost and it was much higher (40%) than your estimate. I came up with 74.3 cents per round with the following assumptions:

175 SMK purchased in lots of 500
New Hornaday Brass, amortized over 10 loads.
Fed 210M primers
Varget, 8 lb bottle, including hazmat. 43 gr per load.

All prices were online, Natchez, Powder valley and included shipping and hazmat (if any). I priced the hazmat for powder and primers separately as I am still not clear about prohibitions on packaging propellant and initiators in same box. I.E. is it allowable?

Of course, purchasing large lots of bullets, primers, powder etc will result in shared shipping and hazmat fees, but not 40% less overall, and is not feasible for new reloaders trying to find a great shooting load.

So it appears you've found a much cheaper avenue to buy components. Care to share your secret?

My .308s have averaged $ 0.655 for over 16,000 rounds about 1/2 of which were with Sierra SMKs or TMKs.
The smaller calibers cost less on average.
I shoot everything from .223 to .30-06 and 5 % of the rounds are hand loads - 9mm, 45 ACP and 40 S&W.
It costs a lot less to load .223s than .308s, even with Sierra match bullets.
Also, my costs have been averaged over more than 9 years so they include prices from years ago as well today's prices.
That makes a lot of difference in the cost average.
When I first started, I was loading .308s for less than 50 cents a round.

I too use 210M primers for my .308s and 210s for my large primer hunting rifles.
I primarily use CCI small rifle primers for my .223s and 6.5mm CMs.

I buy in bulk - never less than 500 rounds of any bullet, never less than 5,000 primers, and never less than 8 lbs of powder.
I buy on sales - Brownells gives Edge members 10% off just about every month and I don't pay shipping costs.
They offer reduced hazmat occasionally and I use that to reduce my powder costs.
I average over 20 loads from my Lapua brass - actually about 23 per brass unless I load close to Pmax.

Australian outback loads the 168gn smk and it’s very good.
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