I chronographed a .300 Savage load yesterday with a 165 grain Hornady interlock and 44.0 grains of Reloder 15. It gave me 2600 FPS with a 24 inch barrel. This load is in the Speer manual although naturally they use Speer bullets, not Hornady.
It seems that the .300 Savage can also fill the niche you are talking about and I think there are several other cartridges in that ball park.
The only reason I'm using a .300 Savage is that I inherited a nice older Savage 99 rifle in that caliber. Otherwise a .308 will do everything in that power range. I don't see much advantage to anything else unless you just want a different rifle.
