Nosler 300 vs. SST 300 for Accuracy
 

Hello All,

I've been quite for while while messing around with some other hobbies. I have a September MZ hunt planned and I wanted to get some shooting in before the summer heat gets too brutal.

I picked up some 300 Grain Nosler partitions over the winter. I also traded for some 300 grain SST's. My last few deer have been shot with 200 grain SST's out of my 45 Elite. I thought I'd go with the 50 Extreme this fall and from what I hear, the Nosler Partitions are a great bullet. My hope was to find a load for the Partitions.

Below is a five shot group at 100 yards. It certainly would hunt.



I then shot a group with the 300 SST's. This is my best ever group. I'm not sure if I can pass up this kind of accuracy even though I feel the SST leaves something to be desired with terminal performance. The 200 from last year had complete jacket separation, but man, do these things shoot.



I was using the Harvester Long Black Smooth. Here is a look at the two side by side. I was using 100 grains of BH 209 and a Winchester primer.

Why not try different powder loads with the Partitions?

My Knight groups the 250 SSTs like that...I killed a couple of dozen deer with it...They were pretty hard so I started using high shoulder shots to reduce tracking and to help the bullet expand....I've since gone to 300gr XTPS...

I'll bet you can tighten up that Nosler group by working with the charge and sabots...

They can say what they want but most all my inline rifles shoot the SST's very well. But the Nosler are also accurate. But that is some excellent shooting there with those SST bullets.

im sure I can. This was one charge and onc sabot. it could be my imagination but those Noslers Kicked harder than the SST's. I'm going to need to rest up a bit before I go after it again.

I will. This was round one. I think I was surprised how well the SSTs shot. It will be hard to improve on the accuracy.

My experiences using the 200g SST were good, but the 300g SST, not so much. Ironically, the bullet i tried right after seeing the results from the 300g SST, was the 300g Nosler Partition. Using the exact same powder load, the tissue damage done by the Nosler was astounding, when compared to what i had seen from the SST. That was the best hunting season i can recall. The 300g SST killed 5 deer; the 300g Nosler killed 2 deer. The difference in results was quite noticeable. In the years since, i have never ever used the 300g SST again.

This seems to be a theme. Looks like I'll need to do some load development with the Nosler. I'm not far off with what I have above. I'll do some tweaking to use a superior bullet. Plus, I have close to 100 bullets. They can last the rest of my hunting days.

I haven't used the Partition you're using, but for most of my life I used a 30-30 for mule deer and elk.

I never lost an animal, and I give all the credit to using the 170gr Partition bullet. It won't let you down.

Nice shooting. Over the last couple of years I've tried a number of bullets in my 3 50 cal. Knights with Leheigh Bare Primer conversions. Harvester's 300gr Scorpion PT Gold has regularly shot the best groups, with the Hornady300gr SST running a very close second. One inch or less 100 yd groups with both.This past hunting season I used the 300 SST's excluesively with 110 gr of BH 209, a CCI 209M primer and alternated between Hornady's EZ load 3 petal sabot and Harvester's Black Crush Rib sabot. There I'll give the edge to the Harvester CR. I agree that the SSTs don't pass through much, but the internal damage is massive. I use the 300s because of their better retained energy down range. I hunt in South Texas where 150 yd shots are the norm, not an exception. I killed one WT and 12 hogs(largest 275 lbs) last season and all were one shot kills and only two animals ran more than 5 yds. In the heavy brush country where I hunt, that's a huge plus. As soon as I can get my hands on them I want to try Nosler's new MZ bullet, Hornady's new Mono Flex as well as Federal's new sabotless bullet.