It’s hard to go wrong when you choose between America’s most beloved cartridges.

Yes, it’s absolutely true that I’m a magnum sort of guy, what you might call a “magniac”—at least in certain applications. In the big, open mountains of Asia you will frequently find me carrying a fast .30-caliber. In open country I might make the same choice for the full run of African plains game. On the other hand, for most whitetail hunting you’ll probably find me carrying a 7×57, and recommending its modern equivalent, the mild-mannered 7mm-08 Remington, to my kids and yours.

Among American deer hunters the 6mms and .25s have strong followings, and thanks to the 6.5mm Creedmoor’s sudden popularity, the 6.5mms (.264-caliber) are gaining ground. But if you wrap together the dozens of deer-size game animals and include the occasional elk and black bear, then the most sensible cartridge spectrum probably lies between the 7mm-08 and the magnum .30s. Within that broad range there are two time-honored cartridges that remain among our most popular. This is not just tradition: It’s because they work. They are, of course, the .270 Winchester and the .30-06 Springfield.

Lasting popularity has its benefits. Everybody loads both .270 Winchester and .30-06 ammo, so there is a wide selection of bullets and loads, available in most retail outlets.

Introduced in 1925, the .270 is 92 years old; the ’06 is 111. Despite the many cartridges that have come (and gone) both remain among our most popular sporting cartridges. Sheer popularity is an asset: All manufacturers load both cartridges, any outlet that sells ammo will have them on the shelves, and both are offered in a wide array of bullet weights and designs. But which one should you have? Legendary gunwriter Jack O’Connor was the great champion of the .270, to such an extent that it’s widely believed today that it was the only cartridge he used. That’s far from the truth; he used a lot of cartridges—and he was also a fan of the .30-06. From 1925 until the end of his life he generally had both. He loved his sheep hunting and the .270 became his personal talisman. He would never admit it in print, but in a letter to Ken Elliott he conceded that the .30-06 was a more versatile cartridge. I agree with that. Since 1976 I’ve usually had at least one of each, and although the .270 is only a .30-06 case necked down to take a .277-inch bullet, I see them as having distinct differences and applications.

Both are excellent deer cartridges. The .270 has adequate power for any deer that walks, and the .30-06 probably carries some overkill. The .270 shoots flatter and has quite a bit less recoil. The .30-06 carries heavier bullets of greater frontal area, and packs significantly greater punch. So, much as I hate to admit it, the older I get the more I think Professor O’Connor was right all along: The .270 is an ideal cartridge for sheep hunting. Wild sheep are not extremely tough creatures; the .270 is plenty powerful, shoots flat, and because its lighter bullets develop less recoil, it can be built into a lighter rifle without punishing its owner. We can all agree the .270 is a great cartridge for deer and mountain game. When I was much younger I questioned its suitability for elk, but that was silly. Of course you can take elk with a .270. O’Connor did, and my wife, Donna, and I both have. You can also take moose with a .270, and in a pinch, good-size bears. In his heart of hearts I don’t think even O’Connor considered the .270 an ideal choice for grizzlies, but over the years he took several grizzlies with his .270s because they were incidental to sheep hunting and that’s what he was carrying. I was hunting with my buddy Mike Satran in Yukon in 1999. He was hunting sheep with his .270 and used it to take a fine grizzly. It charged the horses and he stopped it. Elk, moose, bears: The .30-06 with heavier bullets is an even better tool.

Jack O’Connor with one of his rams, taken with his pet “Number Two” .270. While it’s true he used a .270 for most of his wild sheep, it’s also true that most of his early rams were taken with a .30-06. He owned and used several .30-06s throughout his career.

In Africa the .270 isn’t nearly as popular as it is over here. It is an excellent cartridge for, let’s say, “medium plains game” up to perhaps zebra. Donna has used hers quite a bit, and I’ve carried a .270 as the “light rifle” on several safaris. It accounted for one of my sitatungas in Zambia, and it’s been useful on open plains and floodplains where a bit of reach is handy. However, because of Africa’s great variety the .30-06 is a better plains game cartridge. It made its bones on the Roosevelt safari with 220-grain round-nose bullets. It was Hemingway’s preference in 1933, and was Ruark’s light rifle on the Horn of the Hunter safari in 1952. Today we have much better bullets. The 220-grain load is almost obsolete, and there isn’t much one can’t do with a .30-06 and a good 180-grain bullet.

In the 1950s Grancel Fitz became the first person to take all North American species. A generation later my friend J.Y. Jones accomplished the feat, documented in One Man, One Rifle, One Land. Both used .30-06 rifles across the board. This means not only the big bears and bison, but our four North American wild sheep and the Rocky Mountain goat are also included. The .270 shoots flatter, but in these days of fast magnums it’s important to point out that the .30-06 is not just a powerful cartridge; with the right bullets and loads it shoots flat enough for most hunting applications. With carefully developed handloads or “extra-fast” loads like Hornady’s Superformance, the .30-06 can exceed 3,000 feet per second (fps) with 150-grain bullets; 2,900 fps with 165-grain bullets; and 2,800 fps with 180-grain bullets. These speeds almost reach the territory of the .30-caliber short magnums (RCM, RSAUM, WSM), and aren’t all that far behind the .300 Winchester Magnum. As our second magnum era progresses—along with the current fascination for long-range shooting—these are facts we (including me) need to remember.

I will go along with O’Connor’s private summation that the .30-06 is more versatile than the .270: Better for larger North American game and better for the full run of African plains game. On the other hand, the .270 is probably a better all-round deer cartridge, better for sheep and goats, and probably the most perfect pronghorn cartridge. So it depends on your needs; for my purposes I can’t imagine not having at least one of each on hand.

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Opportunity or Plague?

I’m not very good at sitting on a stand. In fact, I hate it…but in a lot of areas it’s the only sensible way to hunt whitetails. So I deal with it. Most of the time I fidget, unable to sit still…but that last hour of daylight holds my full attention. For me that’s the most exciting time. In the morning dawn brings promise, but after the sun comes up chances get slimmer by the minute.
It’s the opposite in the evening…with every minute that passes chances improve. Until,suddenly, you realize it’s just too dark…depending on weather and vegetation, there may be minutes of “legal shooting time”…but if a buck shows up you can’t judge antlers.

That’s a big let-down with a lot of my whitetail hunting, but those last few minutes of near-dark remain exciting at my friend Zack Aultman’s place down in Georgia. Too late for deer or, in the spring, the turkeys have gone to roost…so now it’s time for pigs! Folks who have hogs on their place generally don’t love them…but folks who hunt on places with hogs often do. Well, not always. On my last night in Georgia in December ‘16 I had a half-dozen does and a young buck on a food plot to my right, and it was a perfect evening, misty and cool. Then four hogs came out
to my left.

About 45 minutes of light remained, so although I was sorely tempted I didn’t shoot…but I might as well have. Deer don’t like hogs. Because of a slight roll to the terrain they couldn’t have seen these pigs, and with the breeze it’s impossible they smelled them…but even though I couldn’t hear them the deer could, because, a quarter-mile from the hogs, they ran like the hounds of hell were after them. The hogs left as well and I finished the hunt in solitary splendor.

Videographer Kelly Bertellotti with her first wild hog, taken while filming a spring turkey hunt in Georgia. After the turkeys roosted we went hog hunting, and she shot a nice
“eatin’ size” pig just after sunset.

Nearly 15 years ago gunmaking legend Kenny Jarrett took me down to hunt at Zack’s “Aultman Forest,” literally a pine plantation. There were hogs present back then, but only a few, and sightings were rare. I’ve been there a number of times since, and I’m shocked at how the hogs have increased. Zack declared war years ago—shoot on sight—but it’s like closing the barn door after the horses are gone. The pigs didn’t descend on Aultman Forest in a surprise porcine wave attack. There was no intelligence failure, no “Dugout Doug” MacArthur at a remote base ignoring reports. Their increase was noted, action was taken, and Zack’s troops haven’t run out of bullets…but the pigs are winning. From perhaps thirty pigs taken a year when I first hunted there, in recent years the take has climbed to 1200 pigs per year…and their numbers keep growing.

This is just a small microcosm of what is happening across much of the Southeast…and northward and westward from there. Feral hogs have been present since before the Civil War, so exactly why the current exponential expansion (in both numbers and range) is occurring is unclear…but for sure it’s happening. Current estimates place the feral hog population in the United States at about nine million…the second largest large wild mammal population in North
America after the whitetail. Feral hogs are well-established in various enclaves from Mexico to quite far up in Canada, with sightings in every U.S. State except Alaska. Agricultural damage now exceeds two billion per year.

Now, in Georgia I enjoy shooting hogs. That’s the right term, because it’s stand hunting, and when they appear we shoot them if the timing is right. Realistically, this doesn’t do much good; we take one or two out of a sounder, and the rest are educated, because pigs are smart. In California I enjoy hunting them, which is also a correct word, because we’ve lived with feral hogs for generations, and hunting them is business on the Central Coast. A small sounder can destroy a barley field in a night, but the pigs out there are self-limiting. Periodic drought gives
them up and down cycles, and they aren’t the plague they’ve become in the Southeast. In fact, they are a resource: Wild hogs have replaced deer as California’s top big-game animal, and in our Central Coast region hunting them, processing them, and housing and feeding the folks from our big cities who hunt them is a mini-industry.

Now, I’m from Kansas. When I was a kid I doubt there was a single feral hog in the state of Oklahoma, just to our south. Today the population is climbing toward a million, established in all counties. They’re a problem there, but also a business; hog outfitters have sprung up all over Oklahoma.
They’re definitely a problem in Texas, several million strong—but they’re also a resource, with hog hunting (including, now, from helicopters) an active business.

I’m a landowner in southeast Kansas, fifteen miles from Oklahoma. My neighbors and I keep watching for hog rootings, and indeed we have an ideal situation for hog movement: Wooded, interconnected river corridors, much of it public land; unlimited food; and lots of nonresident landowners. Hogs are known to have established themselves off to the west, and to the east along the Kansas-Missouri line. Once they’re in breeding populations they’re hard to get rid of…but we don’t have them…yet.

Recently I attended a local seminar for landowners on feral hogs, conducted by the government hunters for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Two years ago a farmer shot two hogs less than ten miles from my place. I assumed we’d see pigs in six months, but it hasn’t happened. In our area these guys are doing an awesome job holding the pigs at the Oklahoma line! As a hunter I’d be happy to see them…just at dark while I’m sitting on a deer stand. My neighbors, however, are farmers; they dread them, and we assume they’re on their way.

Because they are so smart, and because they are so prolific, once established it is almost impossible to get rid of them. Ask the folks in the Southeast, and in Texas, and in Oklahoma! In Kansas we’re not smug; we’re scared. The USDA boys showed how the progressive proliferation of hogs in Tennessee and Oklahoma could not have been altogether natural. The geographic jumps were too large, so it must have been aided by folks releasing truckloads of feral hogs so they could hunt pigs.

That genie can’t be put back in the bottle, but our position in Kansas is that landowners or designated agents can shoot hogs…but it is unlawful to possess or transport wild hogs, and there will be no selling of pig hunts. We don’t want to follow the Oklahoma example. Crop damage is just one issue, but hogs will hurt our deer herd and our deer hunting, along with our turkeys and everything else.

I support this position. I’ve seen the advance of the feral hogs in too many places. They don’t need help, and I know how destructive they can be. But, every night just at dusk, when I sit on a deer stand in Kansas, I imagine I’m in Georgia, waiting for hogs…and I wonder if this will be the first night when wild hogs make an appearance at my place. For sure they’re coming, and I’m pretty sure they can’t be stopped.

In most areas feral hogs occur in a wide range of colors and patterns, although black seems to be predominant for most mature boars.

Why it’s a good idea to use a hiking stick on your mountain hunts.

I guess a fancy word is “seminar,” but let’s just call them “presentations.” I do quite a few, so of course I have to switch them around. I have a fairly new one on “favorite hunts,” naturally including a few mountain hunts, certainly some of my most memorable. I don’t know what’s going on, but this presentation has sparked a question I’ve never heard before, and it’s been asked more than once: “How much longer do you think you can keep doing this stuff?”

Scary, especially with another “sixty-something” (never mind which) birthday coming in a few days. Apparently that’s starting to show! The answer, of course, is that I have no idea. I have noticed that the mountains are getting steeper, and the knees are definitely getting creakier. It’s not yet time to have them fixed—but that day is coming. Every person is different; at the shows I hear about—and occasionally meet—octogenarians who are still able to hunt tough country.
They give me hope! I’m pretty sure I can still get up the mountain for a few more years, but without question the window is shrinking.

Climbing with a commercial hiking pole in good aoudad country in West Texas. With a single pole I’ll tend to have it in my left hand. This is not because I’m left-handed, but because my left knee is far the worst and needs the support.

The best hedge I know is to keep in shape. I try! I can’t run like I used to; the knees just won’t take it. So I spend more time at the gym and more time walking and hiking. There’s another hedge that really helps, and I wish I’d started doing it a lot sooner than I did: I always climb with sticks. Any sports doctor will confirm that use of a walking stick takes significant pressure off the knees, especially when carrying a load.

Two sticks are better than one. These days, on serious mountain hunts, I carry two adjustable hiking poles. They’re light, and you can get them at any big-box sporting goods store. Honestly, I don’t always use both; with a rifle slung I find it awkward to not have a hand free. And, anyway, my left knee is a lot worse than my right; old injury on that side, just mileage on the other. So one pole often winds up on the pack, but even one helps a lot. Commercial hiking poles usually have removable rubber tips with steel tips underneath. On early hunts the rubber tips are okay, and certainly quieter, which is important for hunting. On later hunts, or any time there might be snow and ice, you want a tough pointed tip that will dig in.

My African addiction is hardly a secret, and the three-legged “African shooting sticks” are almost universal over there. They take practice to get used to, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve suggested—in print and during presentations—that Africa-bound hunters should get or make a set of shooting sticks and use them regularly. I practice what I preach. We regularly shoot with shooting sticks on the range, and I’m so comfortable with them that I take them almost everywhere…only replacing them with genuine hiking poles for serious mountain hunts.
Folded together, the three-legged sticks, though a bit heavier than necessary, make a very fine hiking staff. There is one caveat. If three-legged sticks are used as a staff it’s important to secure the three legs together—fairly tight—so they are mutually reinforcing. Otherwise, sooner or later, the tip of one leg is sure to catch on something and snap. I’ve broken two sets of good shooting sticks this way!

These days the three-legged sticks I carry are from African Sporting Creations with jointed legs. This allows me to take them down and stow them in the guncase, and also allows them to be used as a lower tripod for support in a wide variety of shooting positions. But this isn’t really about using sticks in their intended role for shooting support, but about the use of sticks, staffs, and poles for hiking and climbing.

Like anything else, some learning is required. I was fortunate. Clear back in 1975 one of the better deals I got from the Marine Corps was a several-month assignment to the Army’s excellent Mountain Warfare School at Fort Greeley, Alaska. Always a bit scared of heights, this almost cured me. We were taught all sorts of useful stuff, including technical climbing with ropes, pitons, and rock hammers; and glacier and river crossings and more. Some of the skills
involve use of sticks, and this is stuff I use on every hunt in hills and mountains.

First off, whatever stick you carry allows a critical third point of contact while negotiating steep terrain. Keep a stick on the uphill side, and lean slightly into the pitch. A staff or single pole can be held in both hands, across your body, offering both support and contact. In Azerbaijan, where the same guides (and now their sons and grandsons) have hunted tur for forty years, there’s a rack of steel-tipped staffs at base camp. The Caucasus Mountains aren’t especially high, but they are extremely steep. This is where Art Carlsberg (the only posthumous Weatherby winner) fell to his death many years ago. Ever since use of a staff is absolutely required…and it really helps!

Downhill is actually worse than uphill, harder on the knees and more dangerous because gravity is trying to pull you down faster than you want to go. Ground the pole(s) before moving your feet, and take it slow, one step at a time. When it’s icy one must be especially careful—steel- tipped poles help—but on open scree and occasionally on snow there’s another technique. You can take your staff or pole and ground it behind you, using it as a brake. Lean back into the pole and put one foot in front of the other, allowing gravity to carry you down. This is called glissading…just make sure there isn’t a drop-off below you! Whether uphill or downhill, if you slip and are sliding down, roll into the slope, face-down. Dig in with stick(s) and toes. And maybe pray a little bit…

Donna, a few years younger with no knee issues, has resisted use of sticks—she likes to keep her hands free. Last year we hunted Dall sheep in the Brooks Range, and this fall, after a couple of previous failures, she got a nice Rocky Mountain goat on a tough hunt in northern British Columbia. I have finally convinced her to use at least one hiking pole. Grudgingly, she has conceded that it helps a lot.

Part of the problem is she hasn’t had any training. More than ten years ago, on one of our first hunts together, my buddy and now partner in several ventures, Conrad Evarts, and I were on a goat hunt in B.C., me with rifle and he with TV camera. Turns out he’d never been in really steep country before, and he thought I was nuts. This business of glissading down a relatively gentle scree slope terrified him. I have never fully conquered my fear of heights, so I finally convinced him that he needn’t be scared unless I got scared. A couple days later, on a particularly bad ascent, I got really scared and we backed off…carefully. To Conrad’s extreme credit, after that hunt he took a mountain training course, readily available in his home state of Montana (and in every mountain range in the U.S. and Canada). If you’re serious about mountain hunting, consider training. It’s important to know what you can do and what you shouldn’t try, and when it’s truly time to be scared. Trial and error is dangerous, and just a little bit of training in proper techniques goes a long, long way.

So, these days, sticks of one type or another are part of my hunting kit. Unfortunately, I’ve now added another piece of essential gear. In B.C. a couple months ago we got Donna’s goat with few problems…but downhill is the worst on creaky knees, and my pesky left knee locked up several times on the descent. So now I’m training with knee braces. They help, and may ward off surgery for a few more hunts.

I carry African shooting sticks almost everywhere. They serve as hiking staff, shooting support, and, as a gunwriter, I can use them like this to display the rifle used. In this case that’s Donna’s MGA .270, used to take a great blackbuck in northern Argentina.

A hunt for big bears is one of North America’s top outdoor adventures.

Two years ago daughter Brittany, my friend and cameraman Conrad Evarts, outfitter Ron Fleming, his wife, Benda, and I were sitting on a high ridge just south of northern British Columbia’s Spatsizi Plateau. Ostensibly we were glassing for caribou, but really we were just glassing. I was picking apart a bare ridge far across a deep valley when I saw him, the biggest grizzly bear I’ve ever seen.

I told Ron, and I’ll never forget what he said: “Where is he from that big rock?”

The rock was the bear, but I understood the confusion. The bear was very far away and, at the moment, lying still on the hillside. He looked like a boulder…a very big boulder. Then he started to move again, rooting around. We got the spotting scope on him and watched him for a long time. An interior grizzly simply should not be that big. I don’t claim to be a great judge of bears—that’s a fine art—but I’ve seen some big Alaskan brown bears, and this bear would beat most of them.

That was just one day in an amazing ten days during which we glassed grizzlies pretty much every day, mostly on the hillside across the lake from camp. We had no bear tags and Ron had no quota available, and until I saw that bear it didn’t matter in the least. Some years back I shot a very nice grizzly with Dave Leonard, on the Noatak River in Arctic Alaska. At that time it had been many years since I’d taken a grizzly bear, and this was by far my biggest and best. That being the case, I said at the time that it would be my last grizzly. I’ve had no trouble holding the thought…until I saw that bear.

Fast forward two years. I’ve just come out of the same camp, having spent quite a bit of the last ten days glassing for that bear. This time I had a tag and Ron had the quota, so I suppose I would have taken that bear if I’d seen him. Whether I would have taken a lesser bear or not is up for grabs. We saw a gorgeous blond grizzly the first day, not a big bear and not tempting, and in a long spell of intermittent rain and fog that was the only grizzly we saw. But if intent counts, I broke my word: If I’d seen that bear I would have shot him if I could have.

Interior grizzlies are widely scattered, so hunting is usually a matter of extremely painstaking and patient glassing. 

I don’t claim to have a great deal in common with that most uncommon American, Theodore Roosevelt, but one sentiment we share is revering the grizzly bear as the true symbol of the American wilderness. Unlike many young Westerners today I didn’t grow up with grizzlies, but I took my first more than forty years ago, also in B.C. but down in the Kootenays, probably just three miles north of the U.S. border. That was just before I reported to Marine Corps Basic School, so my classmates quickly dubbed me “Griz.” Fortunately the nickname didn’t stick, but I have retained a special affinity for the long-clawed, dish-faced, hump-backed grizzly bear.

Although there are no real limits on a grizzly bear’s size he is generally not as large as his better- fed coastal brown bear cousins, and his population is much less dense as he forages for scarcer food. There are no guarantees on hunts for any of our big bears, but if the weather cooperates and one chooses well in area and outfitter most coastal brown bear hunts are successful. The grizzly is another story: 50 percent is very good, and a one-in-three chance ain’t bad. When I shot my big grizzly on the Noatak I knew I was in the right area, and I knew I had a great outfitter…so I went three times before we caught perfect spring conditions and I took what should be (but may not be) my last grizzly. So I’m not in the least bothered that I didn’t get a bear these past ten days. Whether I’ll try again is uncertain. That monstrous bear was seen a year ago, but hasn’t been seen since. On the other hand, most of the time there’s no one to see him. So maybe he’s still alive, and maybe he isn’t…and maybe I’ll try again.

I will tell you that it is a huge luxury to be able to even consider targeting just one bear in the vastness of the American wilderness. That’s not necessarily something I recommend, but it’s a luxury I can enjoy; I don’t need another grizzly, and morally perhaps I shouldn’t take another. However, I want grizzlies in the American wilderness, and I want them to be hunted. Pursuing a grizzly is a unique and dramatic experience, perhaps the apex North American adventure. But there are two more pragmatic reasons why I believe the great bears should be hunted where populations allow it. In our often topsy-turvy world of political correctness gone mad there is no better proof of a stable wildlife population than a regulated hunting season. Grizzlies are stable or increasing where they are hunted. And there is evidence that limited hunting reduces human-bear conflict, not by sheer removal of bears but by instilling respect for humans rather than contempt.

At this writing there are four options for hunting grizzly bears: Alaska, British Columbia, Yukon, and Northwest Territories/Nunavut. Alaska and B.C. have the largest populations. Alaska estimates about 30,000 brown/grizzly bears, but does not distinguish between interior grizzlies and coastal brown bears; B.C. estimates over 15,000 grizzlies. Bears are stable or increasing, and both jurisdictions have a carefully regulated harvest that, at less than three percent, is totally sustainable. Yukon is far north interior; the bear population is widely scattered, but with just 35,000 people many of her wildlife populations exceed the human population. This is not true of grizzlies, but Yukon has several thousand grizzlies and they’re doing just fine. In Northwest Territories the largest population is in the far west MacKenzie District where, inexplicably, grizzly hunting has been closed for many years. To the east and on into Nunavut the grizzlies are considered barren ground grizzlies, a bit smaller but with exceptional coats. The population is not dense, but specialized Arctic hunts by snow machine are highly successful.

There may actually be room for growth. Alberta has had a moratorium on grizzly hunting since 2010; their grizzlies are both increasing and spreading east toward the prairies, with escalation in human/bear conflict. It doesn’t appear that hunting will resume any time soon, but it’s not impossible. In the Lower 48 recovery continues in the Yellowstone and Glacier Parks ecosystems, with individual grizzlies now roaming far and wide and bear accidents continuing to increase. Both Montana and Wyoming are ready to reopen (very) limited hunting. The Feds are not—yet—but it seems reasonably certain that these populations will be downlisted (as happened with wolves), and when the states take over management limited hunting is likely to be part of the plan. So I actually think I’ll see grizzly hunting in the American Rockies once again. Whether I’d try to participate or not remains to be seen, but a handful of Montana or Wyoming grizzly permits would be ultimate proof of a huge conservation success!

The 6.5mm is red hot—and for good reason!

At the 2017 SHOT Show I was surprised and bemused to find that, in the sporting rifle world, the 6.5mm Creedmoor cartridge was the talk of the show. Suddenly everybody is chambering for it—more rifles and more loads, apparently feeding a growing demand. This was surprising because the Creedmoor isn’t new; it’s a ten-year-old cartridge, developed by Hornady’s Dave Emary and his engineers as a long-range competition cartridge, designed for accuracy. Long-range shooting is more popular than ever, but this market still isn’t big enough to fuel such a furor, so it seems obvious that American hunters are discovering the Creedmoor.

Bemusing because it is, after all, a 6.5mm, caliber .264—a popular European diameter that has never done well over here. Exactly why is hard to explain, but some bullet diameters have remained primarily “American,” others “European,” and a smaller number are truly universal. The .25-caliber, diameter .257-inch, is primarily American, hearkening back to our .25-35 in 1895. The .270, diameter .277-inch, is primarily American, going back to the .270 Winchester introduced in 1925. The 7mm, diameter .284-inch is one of the universal favorites, as is our own .30-caliber. Numbers are boring, but they don’t lie, so let’s take a quick look at numbers. The difference in bullet diameter between the .257 and the 6.5mm is .007-inch, not much. The difference between the 6.5mm and the .270 is .013-inch, still not much. The leap from .270 to 7mm is another tiny .007 inch. So the whole difference from our .25s to the 7mms is .027-inch. In comparison, the leap from 7mm to our .30-caliber (.308-inch) is .024-inch. I think I can argue that the .30-caliber takes a noticeable upward leap in bullet weight, frontal area, and performance on game (along with attendant increase in recoil)…but the upward steps from .25 to 6.5mm to .270 to 7mm are more subtle.

The 26 Nosler was still experimental when I used it to take this ibex in Turkey in 2013. I was all set up for a long shot, but wound up flattening this big-bodied goat with a single 130-grain AccuBond at less than 150 yards.

This is a crowded field, and since 1925 Americans haven’t made much room for the 6.5mm. Prior to the .270 early 6.5s made inroads in this country, but only the 6.5×55 Swedish Mauser hangs on. Despite several attempts the track record for domestic 6.5mms hasn’t been good. I can come up with about eight domestic 6.5mm sporting cartridges from major manufacturers in the last hundred years—provided we include the 6.5-284 Norma, American-designed but standardized by Norma, and ignore the 6.5mm Grendel, more of a tactical number for the AR15 platform. Of these, half have attempted to avoid the curse of the 6.5mm by using English designations: .256 Newton, 1913; .264 Winchester Magnum, 1958; .260 Remington, 1997; and 26 Nosler, 2014. Success of this ploy is obviously mixed. The .256 Newton is long gone and the .264 is just hanging on. Reception to the .308-based .260 Remington has been slow, although seems to be picking up now as part of the new 6.5mm craze. When introduced the 26 Nosler was the fastest factory 6.5mm ever and garnered a lot of headlines, but the jury is still out.

Cartridges designated “6.5mm” have also enjoyed mixed results. The 6.5mm Remington Magnum (1966) is pretty much a dead duck. Using the fat, rebated rim .284 Winchester case, Norma’s 6.5-284 (1999) was, like the Creedmoor, designed for long-range competition. It has done well in 1000-yard competition and, like the Creedmoor, has spilled over into the hunting market. As with the 26 Nosler, it’s too early to speculate on the 6.5-300 Weatherby Magnum, formally introduced just a year ago. The Weatherby number is faster, pretty much the last word in fast 6.5mm cartridges. As drawbacks, it is based on a long belted case, clearly no longer the style. But it is fast and has earned its headlines. Now time will tell.

The 6.5mm has much going for it. From the 1890s 6.5mm bullets have traditionally been long for caliber, which means they hold velocity well. Much heavier bullets are available than for our .25s; though the diameter leap is small, there’s a big difference between the most common 140-grain 6.5mm and the heavy 120-grain .25-caliber bullet. Against the .270 bullet weights are similar and performance on game is similar—but today we have 6.5mm cartridges designed for utmost accuracy, while the .270s have been developed as sporting cartridges.

In long-range shooting (as opposed to long-range hunting) retained energy means nothing. All bullet drops are measured in yards, so trajectory becomes just a series of numbers to calculate. Likewise wind deflection. Three things do matter. First is accuracy; second that the bullet remain supersonic to 1000 yards so as to avoid the accuracy-robbing turbulence of crossing the sound barrier a second time (the first crossing happens in the barrel); third is that it gets this done with as little recoil as possible. It turns out that with aerodynamic shape, the high Ballistic Coefficient (BC) of the long-for-caliber 6.5mm bullet enables it to remain supersonic to 1000 yards without a whole lot of velocity. It depends on the bullet shape, but a good 140-grain 6.5mm spitzer at a modest 2700 fps or so will get the job done. So, in good barrels with match-grade bullets and good ammo, and in skilled hands, the .260 Remington, 6.5mm Creedmoor, and 6.5-284 Norma have all been placing in a lot of matches. Thousand-yard competition means little to the larger hunting market. But it’s nice to have accuracy and efficiency without getting beaten up.

Left to right: 6.5mm Creedmoor, .260 Remington, 6.5-284 Norma, 6.5×55 Mauser. From a hunter’s standpoint these cartridges are essentially equal…the 6.5-284 is the fastest and, as factory-loaded the 6.5×55 is the slowest…but all four are excellent hunting rounds.

There is another number long associated with the 6.5mm: high Sectional Density (SD). Essentially an index of weight to diameter, if bullet construction and velocity are similar then a higher SD translates to deeper penetration on game. Hunters discovered this about the 6.5mm in the 1890s, using early military 6.5mms with heavy full-metal-jacket bullets to take game all the way up to elephants. A long time has passed since anybody thought a 6.5mm was adequate for pachyderms, and in most American jurisdictions “FMJs” are illegal for hunting. But the principle remains. Because of bullet weight the 6.5mm is better for larger game than the .25s, and about equal to the .270s. With the 7mms we have to compare apples to apples. There isn’t much to choose between a 140-grain 6.5mm and a 140-grain 7mm if velocity and bullet construction are similar…but there’s a difference if you step up to a 175-grain 7mm bullet!

Bottom line: Our milder 6.5mms are awesome for deer-sized game at moderate ranges. This includes not just our modern cartridges—the .260 Remington, 6.5mm Creedmoor, and 6.5-284 Norma—but also oldies but goodies like the 6.5×55. With more careful bullet selection all can certainly be used for game up to elk, but for hunting, as opposed to target shooting, higher velocity translates to more downrange energy projected; flatter trajectory that simplifies shooting solutions; and reduced flight time, which decreases wind deflection. Steve Hornady, ever loyal to his own cartridges, has done a fair amount of mountain hunting with his 6.5mm Creedmoor. I would prefer not to. To me this is where the fast 6.5mms come in. None of them, whether the .264, 26 Nosler, or 6.5-300 Weatherby, are likely to develop reputations for winning matches. But they project more energy farther, are better for larger game such as elk and the general run of African plains game…and better for mountain game. Considering the power level, recoil remains surprisingly mild.

It seems to me more American hunters and shooters are rediscovering the 6.5mm. It’s really amazing to walk a mild 6.5mm out to 1000 yards. It’s equally amazing to see how well they perform on deer-sized game, just as they did in the 1890s. But there are really two paths, efficiency and low recoil; and high velocity performance. I’m still a fan of the .264, but now with two faster choices I doubt it will make a comeback. Both the 26 Nosler and the 6.5-300 Weatherby Magnum are a lot faster. I’ve used both, and it’s amazing how fast the bullet gets there!

The fast 6.5s aren’t for everybody; the big surge right now seems to be toward the Creedmoor. The point, however, is that suddenly we have more 6.5mm choices than ever before. The Europeans have long recognized it as an exceptionally useful bullet diameter. It seems to me we backward Americans are finally catching on!