What do you guys set it at. The longest I can fit in my magazine is 2.866. Thats a long way from the lands. The rifle shoots about a 1" group at best. I guess thats ok for hunting but there has got to be good overall length for this gun. I am starting to thing Browning made a pretty big design flaw with this short mag in the A-Bolt.

Just about all magnums, 300win mag, 338 win mag, RUM's, whatever, have alot of freebore unless you have a custom chamber. And I know people that has had custom chambers and you can throw the reloading books out the window, cause you are not going to be able to reach. Most if not all factory WSM ammo doesnt' exceed 2.86".

Reaching the rifling can be way overrated. I have found alot of other factors can be much more important like brass quality, bullet runout, case neck thickness.

No big deal I got tremendous groups with my ABolt set at 2.860 and using H4350 ...Design flaw I seriously doubt it what kind of bullets and powder are you using?

I have loaded many Browning A-Bolts that the distance to the rifling is not in conjunction with the magazine, but they have all shotthree shot groups under an inch at 100 yds. Good luck.

There are quite a few rifles out there that limit your bullet length. If your rifle is shooting 1" groups at your limited length then IMO, I don't see any problem at all.
Also, maybe bigcountry can concur or correct me but I believe that the bullet shoud be seated in the case a minimum of one bullet diameter (.308" for your 300 WSM)??

I concurand will say deeper in the case less bullet runout that usually exists.

The best thing I ever did was invest in this...

http://www.stoneypoint.com/oal_index.html

Your just not going to get that bullet near the lands on an Abolt because of the magazine. In the case of a 300 wsm setting the OAL to 2.860 and using H4350 gives me more then satisfactory accuracy. Now a 300 wsm Model 70 that I sold a friend we set it at .020 off the lands with a Nosler Partition and same load used in the Browning. It shot fine, not as well as the Browning but still ok. That gun had bedding issues because of its cheap stock. I have yet to see a Abolt that doesn't shoot irregardless of whether factory or handloads were used.

I've got a 300wsm A-bolt also. My gun shoots pretty good groups with a COL of 2.820... Getting consistent .75" groups... For me that is awsome...