I've been loading for my Swiss rifles for many years and I have tried a number of powders and bullets. I started with Varget and 168gr Sierra Matchkings but like with the 308 the 168's just didn't seem to cut it. I tried lighter bullets but they weren't quite what I wanted either. I tried using the surplus 173gr M1 bullets that the government sold off years ago as they were supposed to be designed based on the GP11 bullet and they did quite well but supplies have disappeared. Sierra came out with the 175gr Matchking and that is what I settled on. I'm sure the Bergers are great but they're more expensive and sometimes a pain to get so I'm sticking with the Sierra's. I don't think you'll go wrong either way.
As someone already noted you should measure your own rifle to get proper seating depth. Some bullets like to be fairly close to touching the lands for best accuracy and some don't seem to care. The Berger Hybrids leave a lot of leeway for seating depth and that can be helpful if you have a lot of rifles to load for. On the other hand I keep a dummy round for each rifle in the die box so I can set the seating die to load for each rifle. I've got a variety with a few K31's, K11's, G11, 96/11s, a G96 and a PE57 that I've loaded for. They all have different seating depths and even rifles of the same model are not the same so measure the rifle and make notes. There are lots of ways to measure. I take a sacrificial case and using a dremel cut off wheel I put a slot in the neck of the case. Clean up the burr inside and out and run the case through the sizer. Seat a bullet long and then chamber it. Carefully remove it and measure your length. I use a kinetic bullet puller to pull the bullet back out a little and then check it again. Do this about 5 times, toss out the high and the low and average the 3 remaining to get your seating depth max. I normally shorten this by about 15 thousandths to keep pressure down. Its worked well so far.
The Varget worked ok and accuracy was good but whenever the socialist talk about taking guns away from us its one of the first powders to disappear. So I tried reloder 17 and haven't looked back. I started at 47 gr and worked up loads. Its a good powder for this round and some have said its what is used in GP11. I have no idea myself. I do know RL17 is made in Switzerland so its possible?
I've used RCBS dies since the beginning many years ago and had no problems loading for every rifle I've got. Some say I'm overworking brass for the K31 or I'm not doing this or that or whatever but many of my cases have been loaded more than 10 times with no splits or cracks so I'm happy. Whatever dies you use you'll probably be fine. The key is to pick something and work with it to get the most out of it. Some guys have tried neck sizing but one near universal comment you'll get from Swiss rifle loaders is that it doesn't work. I'll second the comment. The chambers vary from rifle to rifle and neck sizing only works if the case fits back in the chamber. In addition to that the straight pulls don't have a lot of extra power for pushing a tight case into the chamber or pulling it back out. Full length sizing is the way to go for these rifles.
I'm using Privi Partizan brass and so far it has proven to be an excellent product. Accuracy is more than good and I've got cases I've fired many times in the PE without trouble. The PE has some issues with squishing the shoulder so the cases are annealed more often. I do retire the PE cases earlier and run them in the other rifles for that reason. Still it shows the quality of the brass is high. I would try loading the GP11 cases but primers are non existent and spent primers a pain to remove so I never went that route. I did try some norma brass but it was not very good in my opinion. It seems too soft and yet I had necks cracking after just a couple shots. For the premium price they charge I was very disappointed.
Now the picture....its a switch barrel turnbolt rifle made in Utah called the Desert Tactical SRS. I've had it since about 2010 and it was originally designed around the 338 Lapua mag. The cool thing is the ability to swap barrels and bolts to cover about any cartridge up to and a little past the 338 Lapua mag. The barrel in the picture is for the 33XC which is like a 338 Lapua mag with a case about 3 tenths of an inch longer and no taper. Powder charge is around 125 gr for a 265gr 338 diameter bullet. Velocity of that bullet is about 3200 fps. Its a long range cartridge and we've hit steel out to 2600 yds with it.
My buddies from Switzerland love the rifle and a couple of them bought rifles of their own. It was a painful and time consuming process to get them to CH but they managed it. One of the guys asked if I could make a 7.5X55 barrel so he could shoot cheap ammo he could get at home. I had a look and found it was possible so I built a test barrel. Its 27" and fairly heavy with a 10 inch twist. My chamber reamer was made to duplicate the GP11. I had to open up a 308 bolt to fit the case head but that was pretty easy. When it was all done we did some testing and it easily shoots half inch groups at 100 yds using my handloads. I did some testing with GP11 too but not a whole lot as I don't have GP11 to burn. It shot easily 3/4 inch groups or less too. I've had this rifle out west in South Dakota where we shoot out to 2700 yds and the first year out there I was shooting at 2000 yds and dinging the 18" X 20" silhouette plate with ease. A number of others also hit the plate at that range. Unfortunately my scope ran out of up at that range so I didn't go any further.
This year we got out to 2500 yds. I have a newer scope with more adjustment and it was not too tough to get there. I remembered to bring the GP11 ammo with me this time and compared the factory and handloads at 1000yds finding that the GP11 took just over 3MOA more elevation to hit at that range. For this rifle I'm running a hotter load though not a lot hotter. The action is set up for a 63,000psi 338 Lapua so a 55,000 psi load in the 7.5 is not a problem. For the straight pulls I keep it down at lower pressure as the original round is spec'd at 44,000 psi.
The point of all this is that you can handload for your rifles and by matching the load to the rifle you can improve your accuracy if you want or if just being able to shoot is the important thing you can do that too. Who knows when, if ever, another load of GP11 will come in to the US. With the socialists taking over ammo imports may become a thing of the past.
Frank
