7mm Remington Magnum with 195 EOL seated at 3.545 OAL.
Note to Rokslide Members. To make this post extra interesting, Berger and Rokslide have teamed up to giveaway a box of these 195 EOL 7mm bullets. To enter, all you need to do is post questions or comments on this thread. If you don’t have anything to say but want to be entered anyway, just post a comment “count me in”. Robby will draw from the names of everyone who posted. It’s fine to post multiple times but your name will only be counted once in the drawing. You have 7 days to enter.
Robby was kind enough to send me a box of the 195 Berger 7mm EOL bullets to test out. I had planned to shoot them out to 700 yards but some unanticipated hunts and work stuff got in the way. So here is the information I was able to gather during the testing period I had and I think members will want to give these new bullets a try.
I have been completely satisfied with shooting the 168 Berger Hybrids for years, but I was interested to see if I could get the velocity I needed in the relatively small 7mm Remington Magnum case to gain an advantage over my existing load. Crunching numbers I figured if I could get at least 2800 fps and great accuracy with the 195 EOL bullets, I’d shoot them and hunt them the next few years.
Before we get started, here was a comparison regarding recoil and shooting these highly efficient bullets. Recoil in foot pounds of a .892 form factor bullet going 2850 fps in a 9 pound rifle is coming in at 27 foot pounds, this from the 195 EOL 7mm bullet. Compare that to a slightly less efficient .897 form factor bullet in 338 going the same 2850 fps in a 12 pound rifle and that recoil jumps to 45 pounds. I don’t like to use brakes on my rifles so the savings of 3 pounds of rifle weight while dropping 40% of the recoil is attractive to me for what I do. I can also understand sending 300 grain bullets downrange, so just an observation regarding recoil and rifle weights to get these high performance bullets moving.
The rifle used for the 195 Berger testing was chambered in 7mm Remington. Mine is an 8.5 twisted Rock finished at 25” and the 195s hit the lands at 3.56 OAL. Total weight with rail, Seekins rings, and SWFA 6x milquad scope is right at 9 pounds.
I wanted to see what my maximum safe velocity would be using Retumbo as well as see if the initial accuracy results would warrant further testing. I am a hunter first and a handloader second. My brass prep for this test consisted of trimmed to length fired cases. No sorting of any type so those who go the extra mile will be rewarded with more precision is my guess.
I started at 66 grains of Retumbo and went to 70 grains. No pressure signs of any sort were noted and velocity ranged from just under 2800 fps to a high of 2900 fps. At 67-68 grains it started to group nicely and I decided to load up a group of loads at 67.5 grains of Retumbo and start experimenting with seating depth.
Accuracy was actually sub MOA on all groups fired. The 195s seem to be very forgiving regarding seating depth. I found good accuracy from the lands to .06 off. Any variances in accuracy could easily have been written off to my shooting ability. I am going to settle on .015 off the lands for my rifle and load which is the 3.545 length shown in the photo at the top of the article.
In my son’s rifle with a 9 twist barrel, the 3.50 oal with 67.5 grains of Retumbo went .48” with the only 3 shot group I fired in it. This happened to be right at the lands in his rifle.
Due to a number of challenges with my schedule I have been unable to stretch these bullets out to longer ranges. In my rifle, with a longer than saami throat I hit the lands at 3.56 OAL and remained inside the factory mag length of the Remington 700. Based on this, I think anyone running a standard saami throat will easily hit the lands and remain in the box.
So in my 7mm Remington Magnum, I was able to hit 2900 fps with 70 grains of Retumbo with no outward signs of pressure noted. Accuracy for my rifle was best at 2830 fps and 67.5 grains of Retumbo. The 195 EOL in my opinion allows the 7mm Remington to takes it’s long range performance up another notch. Will look forward to some terminal performance results next fall from other members and hopefully myself.
