6.5 has made obsolete my rifles

[Gtscotty]

I really tried not to get sucked into this turd of a thread, but....

Well Bob, Richard Graves made 130gr,142 (700 B.C.)and 150's in .257
Wildcatt Bullets makes 125 130 and a 156gr .257 with a B.C. of about 800
Matrix still produces 165gr (.738 BC) and 175gr (.782 BC) .277 bullets.
Matrix Ballistics is coming out with 135gr ULD .257
Berger makes a 180 gr .277 bullet for the 270 Win
How much higher do you need Bob?

Obviously, the fact that there have never been any factory rifles made that would stabilize any of these bullets, highlights an advantage of cartridges like the 6mm and 6.5 Creedmoor for the 99% that are buying factory rifles right? I'd guess Llama Bob was referring to useable bullets with high BCs.

Sure if you are buying all custom rifles you can order custom barrels with custom twists (if offered) and throats for rare and expensive bullets, to accomplish what the better cartridge designs do right out of the gate, and in factory rigs. That doesn't even touch on the fact that once you can stabilize heavy, high BC bullets, it's nice to be able to fit them in your magazine while still seating reasonably close to the lands.

 

[Llama Bob]

Obviously, the fact that there have never been any factory rifles made that would stabilize any of these bullets, highlights an advantage of cartridges like the 6mm and 6.5 Creedmoor for the 99% that are buying factory rifles right? I'd guess Llama Bob was referring to useable bullets with high BCs.

Gee, you think? This really isn't complicated. Any caliber with a population of only slow twist rifles becomes crippled because the bullet manufacturers won't make long bullets they can't sell, and since there are no high-SD bullets there's no incentive for the rifle makers to fix the twist rate. The .257s are the perfect example of this, and the .277s are nearly as bad. There's at least a thousand 1:10" twists in either caliber for every one rifle correctly twisted for big game.

 

[Double Naught Spy]

I am prolific 6.5 Grendel hog hunter. This caliber and limited factory ammo choices do an outstanding job for my needs between accuracy and lethality. No caliber is perfect. All calibers are compromises. There are plenty of very good calibers (and bullet choices) out there to use.

In my world, the big competition is between 6.8 SPC and 6.5 Grendel. As a Grendel fan (and not a fan boy), I recognize where both have merits. I chose the Grendel for the relatively subdued recoil compared to the .308 and .45-70s I was using previously, but with a lot more potential than the 5.56 I had been using, that and the high sectional density that would hypothetically add better penetative capability (this latter point being superior to 6.8 SPC). Grendel had fewer ammo choices...I am not a reloader...than 6.8, but I thought it might perform better on hogs. Grendel fans talk about it walking away from 6.8 in terms of longer range performance, most notably beyond 300 yards, which is true. In the real world, however, very few hunters actually do much hunting beyond 300 yards. Of the millions of deer hunters that go out each year, most are shooting inside 100 yards and the vast majority inside 200 yards.

I am now invested in Grendel and am not apt to change. I won't suggest my 6.8 buddies change either. It is the choice I made when I stepped down from larger boars and I have not been unhappy about it. I could have chosen several calibers and could be writing something very similar now about one of those instead of Grendel, right?

When you think about it, a lot of the caliber chasing that goes on (or that I see being described in threads where people are looking for the perfect caliber) is more about perception than reality. Few people actually use a given caliber to its fullest capabilities. I am not hunting hogs at 500 yards with my Grendel. I was never hunting bison with my .45-70. Every caliber you read about will have fans claiming superior lethality, all DRT kills, etc. etc. etc. There will always be claims of superiority and claims of inferiority. What matters is that you find a caliber/gun/sight/ammo/bullet etc. that works well for your situation such that when it comes time that you are pulling the trigger, that the only excuse you have for not making a proper kill is your performance. As it turns out, finding such a combination of traits is really pretty easy when you objectively consider the problem. This is because few of us are actually operating at any sort of extreme. We generally make shots at distances well inside of the performance envelopes of the cartridges and calibers we are using.

 

[CoalTrain49]

the 30-40 is about perfect for deer to wish they still chambered it in lever action.

I shot my first deer in the 60's with a 30-40 model 95. Worked just fine if you kept your range under 200 yards. Back in those days a 308 was pretty unusual, at least where I lived down on the border. Everyone was still hunting with WW2 surplus and old Winchester lever rifles. I remember someone talking about a 7mm magnum but I never saw one in use in the 60's. I bought one in 1971 just to see what all the fuss was about. That was a real eye opener.

I honestly don't think we have any great new cartridge discoveries for hunting since smokeless powder was invented. Better bullets and powder come along almost every year which make older cartridges more efficient. Of course there is this new trend in long range hunting but I'm thinking it won't last long. The new cartridges make it easier to connect at longer ranges but that doesn't necessarily mean greater success. There are lots of factors that contribute to a hunters success and that unfortunately isn't huge. Just about any smokeless rifle cartridge is more effective than BP or a bow yet lots of people every year have success with those.

As Lima Bob said, buy a CM if you're starting out but I don't see any new cartridges making a 30-06 or 270 obsolete. Just ain't going to happen.

 

[IndianaBoy]

I watch Wednesday Night at the Range on the Outdoor channel. Every week it seems they are hyping a 6.5 cartridge ad nauseam. Last night it was the 6.5 Grendel. Last week it was the Creedmoor. It seems this hyping has been going on for at least a couple of years. I'm beginning to think my old 30-30 will not kill a deer anymore or my .280 Rem. is no longer accurate to 300 yards.
The 6.5 may be an outstanding round but I'm not ready to sell off my inventory to find out. When something is hyped that much for so long I tend to shy away from it. This is also true of the 6.5

I think the hype around the 6.5 is for the guy who doesn't already have a rifle, or for the guy who needs the ballistic coefficient of the new 6mm or 6.5mm bullets for sports like PRS.

I'm not going to buy a 6.5 Creedmoor to replace my 30-06 deer rifle. But if I was going to buy a new rifle for precision shooting, something like a Ruger Precision in 6.5, or a more expensive chassis gun would be a better choice than my old Win M70.

 

[CoalTrain49]

When you think about it, a lot of the caliber chasing that goes on (or that I see being described in threads where people are looking for the perfect caliber) is more about perception than reality. Few people actually use a given caliber to its fullest capabilities. I am not hunting hogs at 500 yards with my Grendel. I was never hunting bison with my .45-70. Every caliber you read about will have fans claiming superior lethality, all DRT kills, etc. etc. etc. There will always be claims of superiority and claims of inferiority. What matters is that you find a caliber/gun/sight/ammo/bullet etc. that works well for your situation such that when it comes time that you are pulling the trigger, that the only excuse you have for not making a proper kill is your performance. As it turns out, finding such a combination of traits is really pretty easy when you objectively consider the problem. This is because few of us are actually operating at any sort of extreme. We generally make shots at distances well inside of the performance envelopes of the cartridges and calibers we are using.

That's it in a nutshell. I think marketing has moved a lot of people to believe that the gear makes the hunter. It helps to some degree but the bottom line is the person using that gear. If a person's skill level is high enough just about any gear will work. If a person's skill level is low the newest gear isn't going to help. The marketing might even lead a person to think that the latest gear is a replacement for skill.

I belong to a private range. I shoot there once a week. Every fall we have a few weeks where the public can dust off their deer rifles and check POI/POA. They usually bring 1 box of ammo and zero at 100 yards. I've seen a few move out to 200 and check but that's rare. This tells me that a lot of hunters aren't great shooters. Their skill level with their gear isn't going to be great. A new rifle in a new cartridge isn't going to improve their skill level. I'm pretty sure they won't be able to shoot 1 moa (bench) with any rifle. That's what it takes to use a long range cartridge like a CM on a hunt.

 

[Fine Figure of a Man]

I think marketing has moved a lot of people to believe that the gear makes the hunter.

It certainly has, that's why Cabela's and the like are filled with crap no hunter needs but it sells.

 

[MachIVshooter]

Gee, you think? This really isn't complicated. Any caliber with a population of only slow twist rifles becomes crippled because the bullet manufacturers won't make long bullets they can't sell, and since there are no high-SD bullets there's no incentive for the rifle makers to fix the twist rate. The .257s are the perfect example of this, and the .277s are nearly as bad. There's at least a thousand 1:10" twists in either caliber for every one rifle correctly twisted for big game.

So millions of hunters who have been dropping big game with these "crippled, slow twist rifles" for well over a century have just been danged lucky that the bullets stabilized, hit their mark, penetrated & expanded? You don't think it could be that there's simply no need for a .700 B.C. bullet to bring down Bambi at a couple hundred yards?

Different tools for different jobs, man. I really couldn't care less about shooting sub minute @ 1,000 yards with my hunting rifles since I'm never going to fire a shot at an animal that far away, and wouldn't be using the kind of bullets meant for that discipline anyway. My varmint rifles don't have fast twists, either, because despite the availability of very heavy-for-caliber, high B.C. bullets in .224" caliber, the 45-60 grainers are what perform best. I've used my .220 swift to drill praire dogs at nearly a half mile with that "crippling" slow twist and "crappy" .255 B.C. 55 gr. V-Max boat tails. In point of fact, I would be "crippling" my rifle to set it up for stabilizing the 80 or 90 gr. bullets, because then the velocity with the .220 would cause appropriate weight and construction varmint bullets to come apart at better than a half million RPM.

That's kind of the whole point of this thread. The implication that the 6.5 CM has somehow displaced or made less effective any other round & rifle is is just plain stupid (or at least intellectually dishonest on account of motives).

 

[Double Naught Spy]

Right, just because there is a new caliber that is described as being in some sort of idealized sweet spot does not mean it has rendered everything else obsolete. The new fangled stuff may have some advantages, but those advantages (if actually real) take nothing away from the capabilities of other cartridges/calibers past and present.

 

[Gtscotty]

The implication that the 6.5 CM has somehow displaced or made less effective any other round & rifle is is just plain stupid (or at least intellectually dishonest on account of motives).

You're conflating "displaced" and "made less effective any other round" as the same thing when they are not. The Creedmoor has become a very popular chambering for new rifle sales, and therefore has, of course, displaced some sales for other chamberings that would have occurred in those same rifles. The Creedmoor, has not negatively affected the performance of any existing chamberings, and I haven't seen anyone make that claim.

It's not stupid to accept that a popular chambering has displaced other older chamberings to some extent in new rifle sales. It would be stupid to claim that a new chambering has somehow decreased the physical performance of other chamberings, but no one is saying that.

 

[IndianaBoy]

That’s a good objective article and I think it really boils down what the all the hoopla really is about for the non long range shooters, the recoil. Here in Minnesota typical hunting ranges for deer are less than 200 yards, often less than 50, and even people hunting on bean fields are rarely shooting past 300. I occasionally get shot at yotes out to 500 but that’s not typical. In spite of that I’ve been recommending the 6.5 to a lot of people for deer because it’s such a good balance of recoil and delivering a decent bullet weight on game at these distances. If your not recoil sensitive a 270 or 06 are awsome, but for the recoil sensitive we always used to recommend 243’s. I really like the 120+ grain bullet weight for deer so I’ve never like 243 for deer. Yes a 260 would also be great but I can’t recommend that to someone because rifles in that clambering are uncommon and Ammo is near nonexistent locally. 6.5 creedmore is chambered in pretty much every rifle now and the ammo selection is awsome so it really makes the perfect whitetail cartridge for those not wanting 270 or 06 recoil levels.

That and the fact that you can get the 6.5 or the 260 in an AR10. Whereas the 270 is a bolt action proposition unless you want to spend a lot more money. There is someone making an AR-10 type rifle that is stretched to accommodate 25-06, 270, 30-06, and I think even 300 Win Mag.

They are quite expensive though, and non standard.

 

[CraigC]

There is ALWAYS room for improvement. Should Chevy have stuck with the old pre-86 small block or have the improvements made in the last 30yrs been worthwhile? Guns are no different. The new 6.5's are great exercises in efficiency. Fact is, you don't need a .30cal bullet to kill deer. Nor do you need a cartridge as large as the `06 or belted magnums to flatten Bambi out to 400yds. No, you don't have to replace your tried & true deer rifle with anything.

I think the hype around the 6.5 is for the guy who doesn't already have a rifle, or for the guy who needs the ballistic coefficient of the new 6mm or 6.5mm bullets for sports like PRS.

I'm not going to buy a 6.5 Creedmoor to replace my 30-06 deer rifle. But if I was going to buy a new rifle for precision shooting, something like a Ruger Precision in 6.5, or a more expensive chassis gun would be a better choice than my old Win M70.

Truth be told, there are A LOT of milder cartridges that are better suited to deer hunting than the `06. Does that denigrate anything the `06 does or the people who use it? No, why would it? I guess people have a hard time accepting the fact that there might be an improvement over what they've been using. We see the same t hing with the discovery that bronze/brass/copper mono-metal solids out of revolvers work better for large game than hardcast bullets. Heavy resistance to change. I'm pretty sure that the latest & greatest in cartridges, rifles, bullets and optics doesn't lessen my appreciation or enjoyment of traditional muzzleloaders. Why would it? Discussions like this just baffle me.

 

[MachIVshooter]

You're conflating "displaced" and "made less effective any other round" as the same thing when they are not. The Creedmoor has become a very popular chambering for new rifle sales, and therefore has, of course, displaced some sales for other chamberings that would have occurred in those same rifles. The Creedmoor, has not negatively affected the performance of any existing chamberings, and I haven't seen anyone make that claim.

It's not stupid to accept that a popular chambering has displaced other older chamberings to some extent in new rifle sales. It would be stupid to claim that a new chambering has somehow decreased the physical performance of other chamberings, but no one is saying that.

Llama Bob's contention seems to be that the others have always been lackluster for hunting, and the advent of the 6.5 CM somehow made that apparent

There's at least a thousand 1:10" twists in either caliber for every one rifle correctly twisted for big game.

Evidently he couldn't be bothered to look at the comparisons between these for practical hunting ranges with hunting bullets or consider that decade after decade of successful use nullifies the biased criteria academic argument in the same way that bumblebees shouldn't fly but do. The difference between saying it decreased their performance and saying that they never performed and we're just now realizing it is more semantics/context than a different statement.

The 6.5 CM and other 6.5mm rounds have a lot going for them, I'll probably end up building one for the wife as she has shown interest in and aptitude for precision rifle shooting. But I will understandably scoff at the implication that I am just not killing my game efficiently if I continue to use the "crippled" calibers instead of accepting that the 6.5mm round is the only one which will do it properly.

 

[rayatphonix]

I think the point that Llama Bob was trying to make was that factory rifles were not set up to run the high BC/custom bullets another poster mentioned. As the typical twist rate was set up for common bullets there was little incentive for large bullet manufacturers to develop bullets for custom fast twist rate bullets. Bob never said existing rifles weren’t suitable for hunting or hadn’t bailed many freezers.

 

[venandi]

No round is perfect and right now it's 6.5 hype next year something else. Its marketing simple as that. As long as there is debate about this cartridge family or anything else being marketed it keeps it fresh in a new buyers head. The more its talked about the higher the sales. It happened with the WSM, RUM, and so on. I'd be willing to bet when the beloved 300WM was introduced there was much debate on why replace the trusty ol 06. Use what works for you and what you like. Personally I like new cartridge development. It gives me one more reason to add to my collection. I have a 6.5 CM but nothing will ever replace my .308's or my .300WM's ever.

 

[MachIVshooter]

Bob never said existing rifles weren’t suitable for hunting

See

There's at least a thousand 1:10" twists in either caliber for every one rifle correctly twisted for big game.

If he had said "correctly twisted for stabilizing high B.C. bullets", I'd take no issue with the statement, as it would be true. The statement as it was made is demonstrably not true.

 

[Coal Dragger]

I think the point that Llama Bob was trying to make was that factory rifles were not set up to run the high BC/custom bullets another poster mentioned. As the typical twist rate was set up for common bullets there was little incentive for large bullet manufacturers to develop bullets for custom fast twist rate bullets. Bob never said existing rifles weren’t suitable for hunting or hadn’t bailed many freezers.

Stop using logic and reading comprehension! It is not welcome in this thread!

Facts like commonly available barrel twist rates, and magazine lengths for given calibers have no place here!

 

[Varminterror]

Ever since just after WWI, cartridge "developers" have been creating new calibers which were all supposed to make obsolete the 30.06.
Help me out here, what's the most popular hunting cartridge on the shelves at the sporting goods store, with the greatest selection of bullet weights
and tips?

Other than a few oddball stores, this sentiment is 100% baloney. The .30-06 has not been on a top 10 sales list for ammo or rifle manufacturers for over a decade (that I’ve been keeping record). It remains more popular than it deserves, but it’s a long ways from most popular.

 

[MachIVshooter]

Other than a few oddball stores, this sentiment is 100% baloney. The .30-06 has not been on a top 10 sales list for ammo or rifle manufacturers for over a decade (that I’ve been keeping record). It remains more popular than it deserves, but it’s a long ways from most popular.

A couple of years old, but:

https://www.chuckhawks.com/best_selling_rifle_cartridges.htm

https://www.americanhunter.org/articles/2015/12/20/america-s-most-wanted-ammunition/

http://knowledgeglue.com/what-are-the-most-popular-calibers-in-the-us/

If we consider big game hunting use only, which is what Dibbs did ("what's the most popular hunting cartridge"), I'd say with confidence that the '06 is still #1

For the record, I have no "dog in that fight", so to speak. My '06 guns are an M1 Garand, an M1903 and an 03A4, none of which I use for hunting. My two primaries, the .25-06 and 8mm Rem Mag, have never been top 10 to my knowledge. The latter has probably never been top 50.

 

[Varminterror]

That Alaskan data gets trotted out every time I mention the fallacy of this myth as if Alaska applies to all 50 states, and Chuck’s zero reference article made it truthful.

I worked on an article 10yrs ago, kept cataloging info since directly from ammo and firearms manufacturers. The 30-06 hasn’t been in the top 10 averaged firearms or ammunition sales in that time.

 

[Slamfire]

How does "lead free" change lethality characteristics of a 6.5 mm? Lead free is called "monolithic" in the popular press, (probably to avoid protest from those who equate lead with freedom) and from what I have read, lead free bullets are either copper or brass, both of which are lighter than lead core bullets. So, going to a lighter bullet, is that going to change the wounding effect of a 6.5 mm bullet at distance, for the worse?

Maybe need a return back to 8mm?

 

[MachIVshooter]

That Alaskan data gets trotted out every time I mention the fallacy of this myth as if Alaska applies to all 50 states, and Chuck’s zero reference article made it truthful.

I worked on an article 10yrs ago, kept cataloging info since directly from ammo and firearms manufacturers. The 30-06 hasn’t been in the top 10 averaged firearms or ammunition sales in that time.

That's confirmed by the 3rd link, and I don't have any doubt that it's been out of the top 10 in the total category for quite some time. It's not a popular plinking, target, competition, varmint or defense round. But the subject was hunting, which immediately excludes rounds like .22 LR, 9mm, .223 Rem and 7.62x39, since those account for literally tens of thousands into backstops for every animal they bring down. .308 is one which is used plenty for big game, but which still has orders of magnitude more slugs not fired at biological targets. Rounds like .30-06, .270, 7mm Mag, on the other hand, tend to be sold to hunters to the tune of a box or less per year, a few rounds of which are sight in and maybe one or two fired at animals.

I also don't consider varmint shooting or dispatching pest animals to be hunting. When you don't much care about a miss like not hitting one praire dog, or about having to hit a critter multiple times like guys with night vision on 5.56 ARs taking out hogs that are tearing up their fields, it's not hunting.

My .25-06 has probably fired only 400 rounds in the 20 years I've owned it, while my 5.56 ARs have probably cumalatively fired over 50,000. But those 5.56 ARs have never brought down a big game animal, to include "medium" game pronghorn & deer. Likewise, for the many thousands of rounds of .308 I've put down range, only a couple of those bullets ever went through an animal weighing more than 50 pounds.

 

[someguy2800]

If I go to the local sporting goods stores and look at the bolt action rifles on the shelf probably 20% of them are 30-06. I don't think ammunition sales can be used as a representation of usage. Most people deer hunting buy a box of ammo every other year.

 

[Varminterror]

In marketing, “popularity” is really simple - what’s selling. I catalog that based on firearms and ammunition sales. Without a doubt, the .30-06 has a greater percentage of ammo sales than it does firearms sales in recent years, but it’s not a high seller in either ammo nor firearms. That generation has long passed.

 

[Coal Dragger]

I think we’re also seeing a generational shift in common uses for rifles. A lot of guys my age or younger don’t really hunt very much. I was brought up target shooting, then went into the Marines and shot what Uncle Sam wanted shot, got into competitive shooting, and still enjoy training and shooting.

I’ve tried to like hunting, and done a bit of it.. but at the end of the day hunting is not an activity I go out of my way to do anymore. I haven’t applied for tags in South Dakota in 3 years now. It’s almost impossible to have good hunts on public land because of all the other hunters, and getting on private land is far too expensive to be worthwhile for me. Hunting in this country is slowly but surely going the way of hunting in Europe: a rich person or landed gentry activity. So the trends in firearms sales reflect that, as do cartridges.