I want to make some decent deer hunting ammo by substituting either Sierra Game King 125gr or 150gr .311 soft points into Russian 122-125gr or 154gr+/- steel case ammo as appropriate.
I just plan to pull the bimetal bullets and substitute the Sierra’s. Poor accuracy is often due to poor bullet consistency regardless of powder charge or velocity consistency. What Russian steel case shows the most consistent velocity regardless of good or bad accuracy?
I’m going to go with Golden Tigers. I haven’t seen any for a long time, but it did very well in accuracy in both my Russian SKS and my Vz58.
Wolf Polyformance has seemed fairly concestent.
I don’t have very much shooting in with the 7.62X39mm, the two rifles that I mentioned are my only in that caliber and I haven’t shot the Russian SKS in forever.
I’ve had decent performance from Golden Tiger. The Wolf Polyformance HP stuff I’ve fired seems pretty consistent as well.
Honestly, though, I don’t see much point to this exercise. If you want to experiment, that’s fine, but personally I’d just buy box of Federal Fusions for $25 and go hunting. By the time you buy Russian stuff and Game Kings and invest your time, I think you’ll be over the cost of the Fusions anyway.
FWIW I built an AR in -39mm and it shoots ~2" 5-shot groups at 200Y, using Brown Bear bulk ammo. Using PMC 125-grn softpoints and it’ll print 3/4 MOA groups. Even used to deer hunt w/ my scoped SKS using that PMC ammo, makes a great handy arm, very accurate and expands well, knocks them down dead. Used it as a straight pull bolt action by removing the piston rod.