I came across these bullets over the summer while working with my 338/408 Improved and they're becoming my new bullet. The best way I've found to describe them is as a cross between a Berger and a Barnes. So far they've shot great for me with almost no load development, easily .5 MOA, which is better than the Barnes bullets usually do for me. For long range shooting, I've had better luck getting consistent accuracy with these than I have with the Cutting Edge Bullets. The CE bullets have always given me trouble past about 700 yards. They'd shoot great for a few shots, but then I'd get one that would just go off into no man's land! I've shot the 305 Hammers out to 1680 yards and they held .75 MOA consistently.
This is the 260gr Hammer Hunter that I'm shooting in my 338/375 Ruger Striker. The bullet on the left is a 300gr OTM to give some scale. I'm going to test them on elk in about 2 weeks on a Utah cow elk hunt.
This is the 305gr Hammer Hunter next to a 300gr OTM. It's a long bullet, but it will stabilize in a 1-9 twist. If I ever actually hunt with the 338/408 Improved this is the bullet I'd use.
I've only worked with the 260gr and 305gr .338s so far but I'll probably move all of my hunting loads over to these by next season. There's talk of moving over to lead free bullets for hunting here in WA, so I figured I'd start getting ready now. Next on the list to try is a 117gr .227 for the 270 AR and a 124gr 6.5mm for the bolt action 6.5 Grendel. Like all the solids, they're too expensive to just use for plinking but they're pretty reasonable for a premium hunting bullet.
I've been eying the 6.5s for my 6.5brx upper. I will be throwing a 6.5 Creedmoor on my savage this year too.
The hammers might be long for the my 6.5 BRX but I do have some Cavity Back Bullets in 118gr that work well in the 2.290 range. Cavity Back also does 105gr 6.5s that would be pretty awesome for grendels.
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How is your BRX upper working for you? I had a 6.5 BRX barrel for my AR and it was a lemon, never shot better than 2 MOA. I swapped the BRX out for the 270 AR barrel and I've been way happier. I still have the BRX barrel extension and bolt sitting on my bench waiting to be reborn as a 6mm Dasher.
Steve at Hammer Bullets said they were running the 124gr Hammer Hunter at 2500 fps from the Grendel so I would expect your BRX to hit 2700 pretty easy. I was running the 123 A-Max at 2725 from my 20" BRX barrel.
It's been decent. I have done some load workups this summer. I got some impressive looking groups pushing 107smks fast, 1moa or better. Hit a node up around 3000fps. I started working on 130 berger AR Hybrids. However I tried them in Norma dasher brass and my extractor did not like the brass rim thickness. So I have to try again with my Lapua 6mmBR cases.
I've shot 93gr SMKs into about 1" 10 shot groups. The barrel is capable, I just need to get a good hunting load. I rebuilt it into a side charge upper with no gas tube. That way I can manually charge it and use it in PA for deer/bear seasons.
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