What's the best nose shape for long range shooting?

[Distant Thunder]

You guys need to post pictures of the bullets that you have actually used if possible. All money bullets, as an example, are not created equal. I read recently that the first version of the was much heavier in the nose, more like a Medford design. The second version was thinned down for some reason and that became the "popular" and much copied version we see today.

The Postell has transformed over time also but in the opposite way. The original Postell was a grease groove version of the Sharps long-range paper patch bullet (WHY would anyone do that?!) It later was transformed into more of a bore ride nose and is along the lines of a Paul Jones Creedmoor design.

I get the feeling that the evolution of our bullets is not necessarily pushed by the actual performance over long distances. To be honest, while there are some gains to be made in ballistic coefficiencies I don't believe that in practice they are as pronounced as some people have stated, not in the transonic zone. Any accuracy that is sacrificed for gains in a higher BC don't yield enough of a gain for the accuracy lost.

I'm thinking that the gains in BC are minimal in part because we are actually working in all three velocity ranges, supersonic, transonic and subsonic and the bullet shape best suited to one isn't necessarily well suited for the other two. It is well know that to transition from supersonic to subsonic is bad for any moving object and yet here we are, stuck in the worst possible velocity range that exists. So the real question is, how best to deal with that? What bullet shapes in use are best to deal with the transonic velocities we must operate in?

I do believe if we get enough of your personal observations and experiences that we will see a trend and it may be a surprise to current thinking.

I think J.B. made a good point with this, "Sharps' style nose has been more forgiving in changing conditions....".

We're not going to discover anything new or invent the "MAGIC" bullet, heck we're not even going to try anything that hasn't been done before. I do hope we will narrow the field to a few of the best bullets that have designs that make them more determined to stay the course at long-range no matter what tries to move them off their intended target.