Winchester Ammo Test BST

As a reloader I normally reckon I can produce better ammo for my needs than most of the manufacturers, however falling on to some good factory fodder is not to be ignored either! Certainly if it fills the bill and saves valuable time better spent shooting, such a brand is Winchester’s Ballistic Silvertip (BST). OK I admit it’s hardly hot off the press but other types have come and gone from their roster but the BST in just about all calibres remains alongside their newer offerings, and rightly so in my opinion!

DISTINCTIVE

There’s little doubt it’s an eye-catching cartridge, packed in a black box with a nickled case that will be more resistant to corrosion and a silver polymer tip to the black Allox-coated boat tail bullet. This is supposed to reduce barrel fouling and bore friction. Ok just another pretty looking ballistic tip, well not quite, as cutting a bullet in half shows a thicker jacket on the bearing surface area, which is what first attracted me to it for my Blaser R8 Professional Success in 270 Winchester. It gives rapid, controlled expansion with a good amount of mass retention, which with my 270 is paramount as a light, fast, bullet can really come apart on impact and cause massive tissue damage.

That and the velocity as the tube on my R8 is 22” and tends not to get the best speeds out of some loads! The BST in 270 offers a 130-grain bullet rated at 3050 fps, over the chrono it produced 2970 fps/2599 ft/lbs of energy; pretty good! With this calibre my major concern is excessive expansion, which results in overt meat damage. However the more solid construction of the BST design negates this to a far more acceptable degree! The first animal shot with it was a roe buck; behind the shoulder at 127 yards it went down nicely. Opening him up showed a perfect pass through and minimal meat damage around the bullet path!

The bullet has a ballistic coefficient (BC) of 0.433, which is pretty good, accuracy testing shows that it’s capable of .75” or better @ 100 yards; again not too shabby!

223 OPTION

With my 270 sorted my thoughts turn to my 223 Rem - a Mauser M03 Extreme with a 23” barrel and a 1-10” twist rate. Given the rifling pitch, which is a bit odd in terms of the calibre it shoots a wide choice of weights from the tiny 35-grain Hornady NTX for small varmints up to 60-grain soft tips for small deer. With the success I had with the 270 load I thought I would look at the bread & butter 55-grain BST; for me the main targets are muntjac and fox and maybe a bit of crow and rabbit destruction too. The bullet has a BC of 0.267!

Winchester quote 3240 fps and 1282 ft/lbs of energy, which is not bad for a 223 in this weight and if used for small deer it gives 282 ft/lbs over the minimum energy limit of 1000 ft/lbs. Pleasingly the M03 produced 3210 fps/1258 ft/lbs, which at a mere 30 fps and 24 ft/lbs less is not too shy of the quoted figure. Not too bad at all! Again accuracy is good at 0.5-0.75” though its smaller/lighter bullet is a bit more fragile than the 130-grain .270. However, it’s not that bad on muntjac and I tend to go for heart shots at longer distances but neck up close. There are also 35 and 50-grain options in 223 but only 130-grain in the 270.

My experience with both these BST calibres has been very good and to be honest I cannot see the point of trying to replicate them on my reloading bench! However, the cases are reloadable though I have never been a fan of running nickled brass though my dies! It is also possible to get BST bullets if you want to roll your own too.