Best rounds for Long Range 9mm Shooting (50 - 200 yards)

Reading some of the posts about 115gr Match and Duty ammo testing and the like got me to thinking about the various trade-offs in 9mm ammo for long range shooting. What would you all choose for doing long range shooting out past 50 yards with 9mm?

Obviously a part of it would have to do with what your gun likes, but I'm wondering about the general factors as well. 115gr can be pushed to a higher velocity and could theoretically get a flatter trajectory. That could be a nice thing, as well as potentially making shots on moving targets nicer. On the other hand, it is my understanding that bullets going from super-sonic to subsonic lose their accuracy pretty badly, though I've not heard if this is the case for 9mm, as the cases I've heard are all either rifle rounds or .22 LR rounds. Does the transition greatly affect 9mm rounds as well? In that case, the 147gr may have the more grenade/mortar like trajectory, but it can be subsonic the whole way there, and it has the advantage of a higher BC.

I'm having trouble finding a well understood/documented answer out there on the Internet (surprise, surprise). Does anyone have some information on this stuff? It seems like both 124gr and 115gr bullets going at their standard to high velocities drop below super-sonic around the 100 yard mark. There seems to be relatively little difference between 115gr and 124gr until you get past 50 yards, and then you see more drop out of the 124gr.

My experience is fairly limited, but this is what Ive found in shooting a g19 about 1500-2000 rounds at mainly 300-ish yards, with some closer. At 200 yards, shooting at rocks, I cant tell very much difference in the drop of the loads Ive used. At 300, its definitely more noticeable. Ive shot mostly WWB 115 gr stuff, with some Rem 115 gr HP std pressure loads. The hollow points need more front sight to connect at 300 yards. Any other loads were in small enough quantities Id hesitate to say how much difference there is, though the older Win-clean brass jacketed flat points also needed a little more front sight, similar to the Rem HP loads.

I zero the point of impact just above the front sight at 25 yards. The 300 yard hold ended up being 2/3 of the front dot held above the level of the rear sight top, and the plate sitting split(center hold as best I could), and a hair of windage that shows up at distance. The HP loads required a small amount more front sight.

The WWB ammo doesn't make spectacular groups at 25 yards, but is able to hit the 18" plate 6-7/10 on the 300 yard plate. I shot it a lot because it was cheap, and good enough to give satisfying results on the 300 yard plate.

Didn't edit in time,...

The difference between 200 and 300 yards in drop seems much more pronounced than 25 to 200. You may not notice much difference in loads and drop only shooting to 200 yards.


The old plate, it was getting slowly whittled down in size. The edges of the old truck differential cover were getting broken off over time.

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9PBLE has very low recoil and shoots very flat past 50 yards in my personal experience. YMMV