Still working with my Omega X7, trying to settle on a good hunting load for whitetails this upcoming season. I’ve settled on using the Speer 300 gr HPGD and will likely continue with BH209. The CCI 209Ms have been working pretty flawlessly although a little dirty. Seems to take me at least as long to clean the breech plug as the rest of the rifle. I may try the Remington STS if I can find any.
The main surprise is the sabots. I’ve for the most part been using Harvester crush ribs (black ones) for both the Speers and some Hornady XTPs (also 300gr). My accuracy was all over the place at first, but after a couple of range sessions, I am finally shooting at 50 yds –it took a while to get my scope dialed in.
After my last range report, Lemoyne suggested I try using the longer Harvestor sabots with the 300gr bullets and graciously offered to send me a few to try out. So the purpose of Friday’s range session was to see if there was any difference.
I shot two sets of five shots with everything being the same – 300gr GDHP, 90 gr BH209, CCIm primer, shooting at 50 yds with my X7 using a Simmons 4X scope (yes, I totally copied Semisane!). The only difference was the sabot.
First five were with the Harvester crush rib sabots.

Second Five were with the Harvester long sabots.

Now they might not look that different but consider the order of the shots. With the CRs, they were all over the place. With the long sabots, my first three shots were all inside of an inch circle. I really wanted to stop at three but felt I had to be honest. I almost think that shots 4 and 5 were the result of overexcitement and/or a hot barrel.
I want to test some more and play with the powder amounts (I’ve been using 90 gr exclusively) but am pretty sure that the long sabots are the way to go with the 300 gr bullets.
The only downside to the long sabots is that they are significantly harder to load, but not so bad that I couldn’t do it in the field.

Thanks again to Lee for the advice and the sabots to try.

Steve