Rifle performance - barrel length

[SD51555]

I'm looking at getting a new rifle for deer hunting. I've really got my heart set on a Smith and Wesson AR-10 in .308. My question is, with a 16" barrel, can you rely on that rifle to shoot accurate out to 200 yards? I don't have plans to be a competition shooter with it, I just wanna know I can cover 200 yards with that rig.

 

[PrairieShadow]

All you will give up is some velocity. At 200yds it will not be an issue at all.

 

[Turkish]

I'm looking at getting a new rifle for deer hunting. I've really got my heart set on a Smith and Wesson AR-10 in .308. My question is, with a 16" barrel, can you rely on that rifle to shoot accurate out to 200 yards? I don't have plans to be a competition shooter with it, I just wanna know I can cover 200 yards with that rig.

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Rule of thumb is 25fps per inch of bbl length. Also, 16” will be incredibly loud. I mean LOUD! I don’t have first hand experience, but I have to think you’re talking about hearing damage without ear protection for a .308 Win and a flash hider, brake.

 

[SD51555]

Rule of thumb is 25fps per inch of bbl length. Also, 16” will be incredibly loud. I mean LOUD! I don’t have first hand experience, but I have to think you’re talking about hearing damage without ear protection for a .308 Win and a flash hider, brake.

May have to look throwing the suppressor on there then. I'm not about blowing my ears out.

 

[Wind Gypsy]

Should work fine. With a 16" barrel I would use a softer 150 class bullet to ensure good expansion at 200 yards where velocity would probably only be a little over 2k fps. I would avoid using something like a barnes or hard bonded bullet like scirocco. For reference, at 200 yards, velocity should very close or slightly better than a 30-30 at 100 yards.

A suppressor would really improve the shooting experience with that application.

 

[Turkish]

May have to look throwing the suppressor on there then. I'm not about blowing my ears out.

Oh yeah. Suppressor for the win!!

 

[Foggy47]

SD....what will a suppressor add to the price?

 

[SD51555]

SD....what will a suppressor add to the price?

I’ve already got the suppressor, so maybe an adapter. Otherwise nothing.


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[Foggy47]

I’ve already got the suppressor, so maybe an adapter. Otherwise nothing.


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I've never owned a suppressor. Had a few muzzle brakes tho. My hearing suffers bigly from a few shots with short barreled guns, muzzle brakes, and bad decisions when shooting them. I won't own another gun with a muzzle brake. Sold 'em so my family would not have 'em one day. Tho a suppressor could be interesting. I have had troubles with accurately shooting light ,short barrel guns at ranges over 100 yards. Maybe it's just me......but a heavier gun and a longer bbl is my friend. Sights stay "settled" thru the trigger pull. Maybe that suppressor will help in that department too? No experience to offer. Curious what you come up with here for a suppressor and your experience to follow.

 

[yoderjac]

May have to look throwing the suppressor on there then. I'm not about blowing my ears out.

I went the other direction with my .300 win mag. It is a light gun and I put a J.P. Howitzer brake on it which makes it extremely loud for the shooter. The gun has less kick than a .223 now. Rather than going through the hassle of dealing with a suppressor, I opted for a set of defendear digital hearing aids with a high DB cut-off. On the range with repeated shooting, I add muffs over top of them. For hunting, I just wear the hearing aids.

They were expensive, but I went this route because I shoot a variety of firearms depending on what I'm doing. Regardless if a firearm is extremely loud or just loud, they are all loud enough to degrade hearing over time. We didn't know any of this when I was a kid. We used to shoot in an old quarry and my hearing is degraded quite a bit. They are not quite as good as my high end Phonak hearing aids that talk to each each other, but they are behind the ear with dual mics that talk to each other so they provide little if any protection from sound entering the ear directly. The defendear digital hearing aids are a custom fit in ear type designed for shooting so they block the entire ear opening and very little sound gets in without going through the mic and speaker where high impulse sounds are clipped. For me, a side benefit was improving my hearing while hunting on top of the protecton.

I found this much less expensive and less hassle than putting a suppressor on each firearm and even more effective, both in firearm performance as well as hearing protection.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[Wind Gypsy]

One thing to consider - I've never owned a large frame AR (AR10) but have read that they are considerably more finicky than AR15's in general function/reliability. A suppressor will impact how much backpressure you have and can cause some additional gas to be blown back and may cause you to need a new gas block and springs to get 100% reliable function. I'm pretty ignorant on the details of all that but i've just read enough on people struggling to figure it was worth noting.

I'm a bolt guy but I'd not worry about using a small frame AR with the right bullets for whitetail inside 200 yards either.

 

[SD51555]

I've never owned a suppressor. Had a few muzzle brakes tho. My hearing suffers bigly from a few shots with short barreled guns, muzzle brakes, and bad decisions when shooting them. I won't own another gun with a muzzle brake. Sold 'em so my family would not have 'em one day. Tho a suppressor could be interesting. I have had troubles with accurately shooting light ,short barrel guns at ranges over 100 yards. Maybe it's just me......but a heavier gun and a longer bbl is my friend. Sights stay "settled" thru the trigger pull. Maybe that suppressor will help in that department too? No experience to offer. Curious what you come up with here for a suppressor and your experience to follow.

Get one. You'll rediscover a passion for shooting. I have a Banish 30 from Silencer Central in Sioux Falls. That'll cover most anything I wanna make quiet.

I'm not a shooter and for a whole host of reasons. I don't like burning up ammo for the fun of it. I don't like cleaning guns. I don't like the extra baggage of hauling guns around. I don't like blowing up my own property, or the neighborhood.

That being said, I absolutely love shooting my suppressed ruger 10/22. I've spent a good deal of time getting that set up just perfectly and it is a joy to shoot. All I hear is the bolt cycling, the bullet hitting the target, and the casing hitting the cat food bowl.

 

[SD51555]

I had it out over the weekend testing a new ammo thru it. The great reset has made it almost impossible to get good ammo.

I wasn’t even stabilized very well, and I squeezed off 5 rounds of each brand at 70 yards. They grouped pretty good for the rest I had. I’ve got this gun zero’d at 60. It’s an inch high at 40, and an inch low at 70.

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[Turkish]

Get one. You'll rediscover a passion for shooting. I have a Banish 30 from Silencer Central in Sioux Falls. That'll cover most anything I wanna make quiet.

I'm not a shooter and for a whole host of reasons. I don't like burning up ammo for the fun of it. I don't like cleaning guns. I don't like the extra baggage of hauling guns around. I don't like blowing up my own property, or the neighborhood.

That being said, I absolutely love shooting my suppressed ruger 10/22. I've spent a good deal of time getting that set up just perfectly and it is a joy to shoot. All I hear is the bolt cycling, the bullet hitting the target, and the casing hitting the cat food bowl.

This! Suppressors were life changing for this outdoorsman, though Jack’s hearing aids are interesting.

 

[MRBB]

barrel length really won't matter, many pistols in rifle calibers shoot sub MOA groups
its about finding the load/bullet the rifle likes!, do some research about what barrel twist is in this gun and then some more on what typically shoots well thru that rifling! and that should help you get a good starting point!

 

[bigboreblr]

I hear alot of people complain about the basic fmj winchester and federal boxes of ammo. With the way the economy is going, I dont think I got enough extra play money for another gun this year. However, I did start buying 308 ammo for a bolt gun of some sort. Likely a savage axis. Just bought an aluminum enclosed trailer and making it fall sleepable. Snowmobile should get an engine rebuild too.

2nd thumbs up for quiet rifles. No silencer here, but I do own a CZ 452 ultra lux 22lr bolt gun with a 26" barrel. I shoot CCI standard velocity rounds. Sounds like your banging a hammer on a tin roof. Definitely could shoot once or twice and have neighbor not think its a gun. A pleasure to shoot all afternoon. And still somwhat cheap. MY CCI are just under $5 for 100. Seems to be the most avaiable of the 22s I see too.

 

[Foggy47]

I had it out over the weekend testing a new ammo thru it. The great reset has made it almost impossible to get good ammo.

I wasn’t even stabilized very well, and I squeezed off 5 rounds of each brand at 70 yards. They grouped pretty good for the rest I had. I’ve got this gun zero’d at 60. It’s an inch high at 40, and an inch low at 70.

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Thats not a "group". Yeah...its OK for minute of deer.....but at at long ranges those groups will be huge. No offense....but, That is more like a weather report in a 40 MPH wind storm. Groups are tight clusters of holes that touch each other at those ranges. Just saying. Grin. ;)

 

[SD51555]

Thats not a "group". Yeah...its OK for minute of deer.....but at at long ranges those groups will be huge. No offense....but, That is more like a weather report in a 40 MPH wind storm. Groups are tight clusters of holes that touch each other at those ranges. Just saying. Grin. ;)

I can't shoot subsonics out of a .22 further than 70 yards. That's the limit of my skill and equipment. I'm sure I could do better with a bi-pod, but it was a quick set up to see if they'd even be close, and they were. That was the point of the exercise.

 

[Catscratch]

AR-10's tend to be heavy and cumbersome to carry. With that said I'm all for them, but when it's time to grab a rifle I usually grab my little break-over .308 instead. I'm assuming you'll want this for stand hunting?

 

[SD51555]

AR-10's tend to be heavy and cumbersome to carry. With that said I'm all for them, but when it's time to grab a rifle I usually grab my little break-over .308 instead. I'm assuming you'll want this for stand hunting?

Yep. I'm also considering rigging up a six position sling for it too. The first AR I set up, I put one of those on, and I really liked it. I hiked around all day prairie dog hunting like that and it was very comfortable. The weight on that AR-10 surprised me. I had to go back and check, and that is a heavy gun. This will be for blind hunting. I don't do walk and stalk in my area normally.

When I built my first one, this is the exact sling system I put on mine, and I really really like it.