target shooting rifle for up to 300 yards?

[jem375]

.243 (for accuracy if you handload) or .308 (for reasonable accuracy
vs cost).

Any "22", including the .223, will drift on highly windy days at 300 yds.
If you like to spend your time guesstimating windage between
gusts and hoping if you hit the target, pick up an AR-15. If you
want better odds of actually hitting the target pick up a bolt action
in 243 or 308, or if you prefer semis a DSA FAL, Springfield M1A,
PTR, etc.

as the poster above your post wrote...the 223 doesn't give up hardly anything to the 308 with 165-168 gr and the 223 with heavy 80 gr. bullets when bucking the wind.

 

[deadly50bmg]

50BMG

Anyone here think that the 50 would be blown around at 300 yards? Buy an AR-50, It kicks about like my Ruger 77 compact in .243.

Just to let you guys know...I was just kidding on suggesting a BMG for this.

Thats my story and I'm sticking to it!

 

[Vern Humphrey]

Wind drift can be calculated by subtracting time-to-target in air from time-to-target in a vacuum and multiplying by the sideways vector of the wind velocity.

Let's assume 3,000 fps muzzle velocity. Time-to-target in a vacuum for 300 yards would be 0.3 seconds.

Let's now assume actual time-to-target in air is 0.35 seconds.

Now let's assume a 10 mph wind at 90 degrees to the range.

0.35 sec - .03 sec = 0.05 sec

Wind velocity in feet per second is 10X22/15 = 14.67 fps. Wind drift is 0.05 X 14.65 = 0.7335 feet or 8.8 inches.

Note that this has nothing to do with caliber, but with the aerodynamy efficiency or ballistic coefficient of the bullet. Heavy .22 caliber bullets have fairly high ballistic coefficients.

It is, however, easier to get a high BC with a large bullet, simply because the weight of the bullet increases with the cube, while the frontal cross-section only increases with the square. For identical bullet shapes, the larger caliber will have a higher BC.