Berger 70gr VLD in semi auto

Has anyone here loaded Berger 70gr VLD into a magazine fed .223? At 70gr, they're obviously longer than a 55gr, but these VLDs look really long. Bergers website says that with the long ogive, accuracy might suffer if loaded to an OAL required for a magazine fed gun (distance to rifling not being optimal), but my concern is more about compressing the charge. I have the bullet sitting on 24.5gr of H335 at an OAL of 2.26.

Am I going to run into an issue here with the bullet sitting that close to the powder? The Berger is about .96in long, where a Hornady 60gr VMAX is .865in. Looking at my Lyman manual, it looks like the OAL goes from 2.26 to 2.55 once you get into the 80gr bullets, so they do sit further from the powder. But the charges on those long bullets are starting at about 2gr of powder less than your typical 55gr.

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but I get nervous whenever I try something new. lol..

Lot's of views, no replies. I guess that means people are interested, but no one knows the answer? I called Berger and talked to one of their loading gurus. In a nutshell, yes, you can load them to a 2.26 OAL, but my charge is a bit on the high side. Should be more in the range of 20-22gr of H335. Is anyone interested in a range report when I take them out? I also loaded up a bunch of Nosler 77gr Custom Competition HPBTs if anyone is interested?

Are you shooting that out of a semi-auto, or a bolt gun? Damn.. That's a hell of a group. I can consistently get torso hits at 600 with the 50gr VMAX out of a 1/8 20 in bbl, but nothing like that. Then again, i'm doing my shooting through a 3-9x VX1 so i'm just estimating my hold over.

25.5 of Varget..? Got to be a bolt gun.

I never did play around with the Berger bullets, still sitting on my reloading bench. I got such good results with the 77gr Nosler custom comps through my 1/7 16 in bbl, and the 50gr Hornady VMAX with the 1/8 20 in bbl, that I never loaded any quantity of the Bergers.

baron said:

I like to load my 9mm to 1.162". I run my powder charge in the middle of the table, I don't have a chrono, and I do it to keep pressure down, and to cut down on recoil and for extra margain of safety. T so I always start with the lowest charge I can find and work up. Never assume that the manual's max load is the same as yours.

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I want to say I read somewhere that having your OAL set too long, and increasing the gap between bullet and powder, causes significant pressure spikes.