Like most shooters, I've always shot bull barrel rifles at competition matches...until last year. I was working on a 600 yd rifle chambered in the simple 308 and was at the point of running bullets down the fresh barrel. The load I had chosen was 45.0grs N135 under a Remington 150 gr Corelok using Federal match primers. At 100 yds, the gun was putting the Coreloks in the same hole. While I was at the bench, a friend came by to show me his new Remington 700 308 and wanted me to put a scope on it for him. I decided it was time for the bench gun to cool anyway so I put the scope on his rifle. I bore sighted it for him and he wanted to shoot it but didn't have any ammo with him. I told him I had loads sitting on the bench that would go off in his pencil barreled Remington but no guarantees about accuracy. He sat down at the bench and proceeded to shoot a near one hole group at 100 yds and that was followed up by me shooting 3 into the same hole. So much for having to have a bull barrel for accuracy. Anyway, that load is now the "go to" load to test the accuracy of a 308 rifle. It shoots in all of the family 308's and makes some of those rifles think they're good enough to go to matches. How many 308 lever guns have you seen shoot tiny cloverleafs? I know the powder isn't always available and can be a hard find but it's my pick for the 308 case. Max load under a 150gr bullet is 45.7grs per Lapua. That would be my recommendation, N135 powder and Remington Coreloks. Hard to think with all the money I've spent on match grade bullets, some of which are custom, only to find that a simple Corelok is just as good in a 308.
Rule of thumb on a 308 is that for every inch of barrel shorter, it costs you 50'ps. I've found that not to be the case though. There's far to much difference between barrels to use that rule of thumb. I've seen 200'ps spread over screens with the same loads from different rifles with the same barrel length. Not all rifles are shooters and some will out perform others. Kinda like people.
