[Jimro]

Mike / Tx,

You wrote:

There was a common belief that the Berger bullets like or needed to be seated into the lands for best performance but this simply isn't so. My friend is shooting the 185's out of his RUM seated .105" back and getting totally awesome groups at 300yds.

I simply stated that some of Berger's offerings are not jump sensitive such as their Tangent and Hybrid ogive offerings, and that their secants VLD line was jump sensitive. The 185 OTMs you mentioned were designed to specifically be insensitive to jump, so I do not think that your friends experience shooting them should be used as any sort of proof that Berger bullets don't care about seating depth because he is loading a non VLD bullet that far off the lands.

I did not write anywhere that seating depth was unimportant to accuracy, or that I knew more about Berger's bullets than Berger employees, which you implied when you wrote:

I stand by what I posted 100% no matter what your intended use is, whether target or hunting, adjusting the seating depth can and does in most cases shrink or spread groups. I will also back up my statement with the following, Optimizing Precision And Accuracy From VLD Bullets
By Eric Stecker

I appreciate you linking to Berger's Tips, but lets not forget the caveat at the beginning:

Interestingly, while VLDs commonly work best seated into the rifling .010″ or more, Berger’s research indicates that, in some rifles, VLDs perform well jumped .040″ or more. This is a significant finding, one that’s backed-up by real-world testing by many shooters. http://bulletin.accurateshooter.com/...g-vld-bullets/

But I would like to point out that the "accuracy band" of 0.030 to 0.040" where the VLD "sweet spot" resides is pretty "narrow" which is why Berger started offering non Secant ogive bullets, to make a "broader" seating depth band where accuracy is still very good. If you want to contact Bryan Litz or Eric Strecker yourself, I'm sure you can have a long and fruitful conversation about the bullet to rifling interface and how to get the most accuracy from a given setup.

You can read more about Berger ogive profiles here: http://bulletin.accurateshooter.com/...-need-to-know/

But I'm sure that FLChinook can benefit from doing a load workup with Berger's seating depth test to find the most accurate load for his VLDs.

Jimro