Hi !, I'll transfer a copy of your Post into the Reloading Bench section, might get a faster response.

Congrats on the moose. I think you will be just fine with the load you are using now. The rifle is sighted in for it and ready to go. Changing your load now without a lot of time to test it may leave you with a load your rifle doesn't like and ruin your hunt. Take your present load, kill your caribou and if you want to tweak your load after the seaon, go for it. As long as the load you have is accurate, I wouldn't stray too far off from it.

I second what chestergolf said and add try a few shots at 300 yards, thats a long ways, atleast for this east coaster. If you can consistantly place your shots on a medium sized pie plate at 300 yards, your golden.

thank you very much for your answers

I'm new to this internet forum thing...I should have said that I was thinking it wasa good idea to go to a much lighter bullet 150 gr or may less and then what kind of load for that.

your answers make lots of sense though....I should probably stick with the bullets I've reloaded and practised with this summer and change things later...

just thought 180 gr was heavy for caribou...

again, thank you for helping me out

A Yukon kid

When you do eventually change your load, try something in a 165-167 gr bullet. I think it is just about perfect in a 308.

I agree with CG. Stay with what you have this year. Next year I would definately go to a 165gr bullet and a bit faster powder. I don't use Nosler bullets but that partition is about as good as it gets. You should also find that cup and core bullets work very well at 308 velocities which will cut your bullet costs in about half = more practice!

The 308 is a favorite of mine, used one for a lot of years. With most bullets I found the best performance came from powders like W748 and IMR 4064. As you noticed, you can't get a max load of 4831 in the case and you don't get as much velocity as IMR4064 will give you. If you want to try W748, I have some data for it in older books. Very good powder.

For my 165 grn loads I use 44.2 grns of varget very clean and just about same velocity as IMR 4064
My 2 cents
F.K.

Sure! My last 308 was a Rem 660 with a 20" barrel. My present is a Rem 788 with a 18" barrel. I don't know where you'd be with slow powder's but I don't care for a powder charge I have to compress. Seem's that if the charge is not moving the bullet, that you can't get enough powder in to get the velocity up to the mid range powder's.