308 WIN SPEER GOLD DOT 168 GRAIN SP (500 ROUNDS)

308 WIN SPEER GOLD DOT 168 GRAIN SP (500 ROUNDS)

If you could own only one type of 308 Win ammo, then you’d be looking at an awfully good contender on this webpage. Speer loads Gold Dot 308 for police sharpshooters, but it’s just as suitable for personal defense and there’s no whitetail on earth it can’t turn horizontal!

This cartridge’s bullet is an INDEFATIGUABLE JUGGERNAUT. More specifically, it’s the Gold Dot Soft Point (GDSP), which Speer created by submerging a pressure-formed lead core in an electrified chemical bath until a durable copper jacket formed around it.

The GDSP’s perfect jacket concentricity accounts for its high G1 ballistic coefficient – 0.446, which is quite high for a 308 soft point. That speaks to its accuracy, as well as its ability to conserve over 1,150 ft lbs of kinetic energy until it reaches almost 500 yards (that’s assuming you’re using the same 24” barrel Speer used to record the round’s 2,650 fps muzzle velocity, although the Idahoan manufacturer promises terminal expansion out of a barrel as shrimpy as 10”).

The GDSP’s special jacket doesn’t just balance it. It also fortifies it, which is why it defeats barriers so handily. Fire the thing at sheet metal from 10’ away, and it’ll emerge out the other side over 75% intact. And if a block of ballistic gelatin were placed on the other side of that barrier, then you could reasonably expect the bullet to increase in diameter by over 55%.