No hunting experience to date. I've got a tikka and a savage 110 that I've rebarreled. Both seem to prefer the speer 200 over the hornady, I haven't tried any of the lighter bullets from barnes or nosler. The tikka is a 1/2" @ 100 gun the savage isa 1". Recoil a little more than a 06 but not a lot. I had some problems with my 1st set of dies, but RCBS sent me another sizer and expander and it works really well. Oh I shoot those bullets sitting on 46.5 of IMR 4895