.416 barrett

[Eagle Eye]

Talk to me about the .416. A guy let me shoot his at fouled bore. Hit 1200 steel no problem.
Anyone have personal experience with one?
Is this on anyone’s wishlist?
Been there done that? Please share.

 

[Okie4570]

If you have a pretty much endless budget I say go for it, same for the .408 Chey-Tac.. I've seen one .416 Barrett in use, never pulled the trigger on one. You can hit steel 1200y away no problem with cheaper rounds and rifles if that's your end goal though. I'm sure Jcann can add more info.

 

[Jcann]

I've never shot a .416 or .408 although I got a lot of time behind a M2 Browning years ago. Back then we had to set the head space and timing, now I don't believe they need to do that with the M2A1. I've also had trigger time behind a friends Barrett 50cal.

I spend enough money shooting "magnum" chamberings and have since found it money ahead to find the "best for me/most affordable" chambering to shoot long range. I now shoot my .260 more than my 7wsm. One can bang steel at 1,200 yards with a 6mm CM. Spotting impacts could be harder but you can shoot hundreds of enjoyable inexpensive rounds in a day. Another overlooked item is places to shoot. I'm fortunate to have family farm land to shoot, finding 1,200 yards isn't as easy as one might think. Trees, hills, roads do have an effect on line of sight and shooting lanes. Fouled Bore is one place close to OKC where you can shoot over 1,000 yards. You're $30 out of pocket to shoot plus drive time/distance. I assume a lot of shooters don't have easy/free access to land for shooting long range (LR). I'm associating LR to chamberings here, so 800 yards and greater is what I would say is LR for most center fire cartridges. If you're shooting 22 long rifle maybe 100 yards is LR.

LR and ELR shooting in my opinion is best taken up with a chambering the shooter can consistently shoot accurately to a given distance and is the easiest on the pocket book. My 7wsm takes 8.6 mils Elev. & 1.6 mils for a FV 10mph wind to get to 1,200 yards and my .260 takes 11.9 mils Elev. & 2.0 mils wind. That's a little over 100 inches difference in drop which is easy to manage and its right at 16 inches in wind drift between the two. Once I gain more speed with my .260 I will be able to reduce the difference some. It cost twice as much to load my 7wsm as it does my .260 and muzzle blast/recoil with the .260 is a lot less.

NOTE: My sons .260 shooting Rem. brass, Berger 140gr Match Hybrid at 2887fps takes 10.3 mils elev. and 1.9 mils FV 10mph wind at 1,200 yards. And you can shoot it all day long.....heck, even your children can shoot it.

But, if one can afford the rifle, ammo or reloading equipment for a 416, I say go for it. I'm all for getting what you want and getting as many as you can. You can never have too many bang sticks....even the underwater kind.

 

[Rez Exelon]

It was on my wishlist for a long time, but I've long since moved onto other long range calibers. 6.5 Creedmoor in a Gen 2 RPR is real nice. And then I've got .338 Lapua for when I want to chunk money downrange. I save a ton of money reloading (which I personally think is a requirement for these kinds of calibers) but even then a Lapua is about 1.25 on the low side when I average out powder/prime/projectile. I don't even want to think about what .416 would look like being even more rare.

Then again, if budget isn't an issue, it doesn't have a certain cool factor, and I also do like cool factor. Like how I'm sure there are better performing rounds than a .338 Lapua, but it's always fun to say 3-3-8 la-puuuuuu-aaaa mag.

 

[Rez Exelon]

On second thought, I think you NEED the 416. (Definitely not because I have some .416 projectiles in the classifieds Not at all related)

 

[elwoodtrix]

A friend of mine lives in Cali and they do ultra long range. Here's their site. http://southwestulr.com/index.html
They talk about what they are using. And I'll post a pic of the results. Pretty impressive!!!