Spiral scratches on bullets?

[A5BLASTER]

Wow, those marks looks almost exactly like the marks on my bullets, and I have a stainless 20" as well. I guess I will call everything "normal", lol.

Since my long range shooting is limited to what I was taught in the military, is there any advice on how to tighten my group from a shooters standpoint? Bags, mechanical benchrest, etc?

Bags. Front and rear and a nice clean breaking 2 stage trigger

[imaguy3]

Bags. Front and rear and a nice clean breaking 2 stage trigger

optics, parallax, good marksmanship fundamentals...

Even small things can affect groups for better or worse, like a muzzle device. I didn't see anything in your pics that struck me as terrible shooting though.

[imaguy3]

Hell that flyer could have been a reloading issue too. Are you using a vld seating stem with those bullets? In my 280 shooting the 175gr eldx I need to, otherwise I'm not making even contact around the bullet and I get concentricity issues, as well as a ring around the bullet b/t the ogive and the tip.

Could have been anything that isn't consistent... odd piece of brass/inconsistent neck tension on that load, maybe the primer had an issue, maybe you misweighed the charge, maybe it was seated to a slightly diff. depth... who knows.

[imaguy3]

Brand new round on left, the round in above pics on right... heck it even looks like the tip took some good damage upon chambering too... yet even with all the damage after chambering these still shoot moa in my gun...

[Recondo]

I also have those case shoulder “creases” on a new rifle. Best way to fix? Shoots great. Thanks in advance.

[1Shot]

The scratches on the bullet are most likely caused by the compound throat that the SAAMI 6.5 Grendel chamber has. You can read all about this in the Volume 1 Grendel handloading handbook on pages 9 & 10. I quote " The Grendel is meant to function in both "Semi" and "Full Auto" models. The compound throat angle addresses accuracy of projectile alignment with the bore while the 0.300 neck diameter enhances feeding reliability." There is more to explain things further. So to sum it up the bullet will slide up into this compound throat before it gets to the lands and thus is being scratched. I have two rifles one with a SS BCA barrel and one with an SS Oden Works barrel and when rounds are loaded and extracted it leaves these same scratches on the bullet. I have rounds that have been chambered a number of times from my hunting trip this year where I loaded and unloaded the rifles a number of times and one of the rounds was chambered once by a full function of the rifle after firing a round when I killed a deer. The bullets are 120 Speer Gold Dot and 120 Sierra Pro Hunter. Both have the scratches and both rifles will shoot sub MOA. The BCA has been very picky as to what it wants to shoot and the 123 SST is the worst shooting bullet in it no matter what load I tried. The Oden barrel shoots well with most anything I have tried but what it really likes will shoot better than I can hold. My hold these days is not consistent dead nuts like when I was younger. I usually pull one out of five shots. The Oden will shoot a ragged hole group with 120 Sierra Pro Hunter for 4 shots but somewhere in the 5 shots I pull one just a might and open up the group maybe to 1/2". The BCA with what it likes hovers 3/4 to 1" with the Gold Dot. Hope this helps.