Rifle calibers can basically be broken down into two categories, the bottleneck cartridges like the 6.5 Creedmoor and .270, .308 and .30-30 Winchesters, and the straight-wall cartridges, like the 350 Legend or the 45-70. You’ll find it all in the Whitetail Country line, but because bottleneck cartridges and straight-wall cartridges each sport wildly different velocities, Nosler smartly decided to run a different bullet in each family to maximize performance.
The bottleneck cartridges like 6.5 Creedmoor, .270 Win., .308, and .30-06. feature the company’s “Solid Base” bullet, which is built to perform at greater velocities. It’s got a boattail profile that boosts the ballistic coefficient needed for accurate shooting at extended range, and it features a jacketed lead core and a solid copper base for deep penetration. Built with an exposed lead tip to initiate massive expansion and a thickened jacket at the base to keep it all together, this bullet will deliver devastating results on whitetail, weather your shooting at 50 yards or 400.
For the slower-moving, straight wall thumpers like 350 Legend, and .45-70 Gov’t., Nosler loads it’s Whitetail Country ammo with its “Straight-Wall” projectile, built to perform at lower velocities and still deliver lethal results from 50 to 250 yards. Just like the Solid Core bullet, the Straight Wall projectile features a jacketed lead core, but it’s a slightly thinker jacket that’s both skived down the sides and exposed at the tip to initiate rapid expansion at straight wall velocities. The tip has also been optimized for feeding, meaning you shouldn’t have any issues running this load in a bolt gun, lever gun, or AR-type rifles chambered in the 350 and 400 Legend.
As for how this stuff shoots, we tested both the 165-grain .308 Winchester load and the 180-grain 350 Legend load and were able to achieve sub 1-inch groups at 100 yards with the .308, and groups averaging just larger than an inch with the 350 legend. No doubt, in the right hands from the right rifle, you can improve on both.
For more information on the entire line of Nosler's Whitetail Country ammo, visit Nosler.com.
