18” or 20” barrel

[Smoothbore.75]

I’m building a .308 AR10, and I’m torn between barrel lengths, I’ll mainly use this rifle for hunting, inside of 500. I think 500-800 is furthest I’ll target shoot, may try for 1000 but not very often as the closest range with that distance is an hour away, what do y’all recomend?

 

I’m use to carrying an M1 Garand in the woods, so a 20” barrel really doesn’t make any difference to me

[Armed Eye Doc]

Others will reply with more specifics, but there is little difference in accuracy or velocity between a 16" and 20" barrel out to 500 yards.  There is a thread somewhere on the forum with that specific information.

[Ravenworks]

I could have saved a lot of weight when I was building mine by not going with a 20.

But,I do not regret it because it allows me more real estate for my two optics.

 

[98Z5V]

I have two "long .308 Win barrels" - one is 18" and the other is 18.5".  There's no need to go with a 20" for any kind of increase in accuracy or velocity, because any increase you'd see would be negligible.  I do have a 20" barrel on a .260 Remington gun, only because that was the shortest I could find, without waiting for a custom barrel.