In an article in the current issue of "American Rifleman," Craig Boddington states that, "In my opinion these three similar 6.5mms (6.5x55, .260 Remington, and 6.5 Creedmoor), despite the magical properties currently attributed to them, do not equal the 96-year-old .270 Winchester as a hunting cartridge."
He then goes on to describe why in four pages. It's a good read.
In a more recent article (from September), Craig Boddington says that, "For deer of any size, the old .270 is hard to beat, and it’s still one of our best non-magnum choices."
The article also states that he believes the 6.5 Creedmoor is marginal for big deer. It goes on to say, "after a decade of popularity, many are questioning the Creedmoor on bigger deer."
My personal experience is that I can't tell any difference between the field performance of the various medium-powered 6.5s (6.5x55, .260 and 6.5 Creedmoor) on big deer and the .270 Winchester. That also includes various larger 6.5s from the the 6.5-06 class--including the the 6.5-06 itself--up through the .264 Winchester, and various .270 "magnums" including the .270 WSM and .270 Weatherby. This is also after having used all of them in the field not just on whitetail, mule, axis and fallow deer fairly often on but on bigger deer such as caribou and elk.
Have mentioned this elsewhere, but don't comprehend why 6.5s and .270s using the same basic bullets, whether in weight or construction, would have different results. Some might mention "physics" as the reason due to the larger diameter of .270 bullets, but have hard time believing an extra .013" in bullet diameter makes any perceptible difference--since it's about the thickness of the average business card.
When hunting all those deer with various 6.5s I have used bullets from 120-grain monolithics to 140-grain lead-cores, and with various .270s have used 130-150 grain bullets, again from monos to lead-cores. Also fail to see what affect an average of 10 grains of bullet weight might have had, since all the bullets penetrated more than sufficiently.
In fact the last "deer" I took with a 6.5 was a big cow elk 10 days ago, which weighed around 350 field-dressed. The cartridge was the 6.5 PRC and the bullet the 127-grain Barnes LRX, started at a little over 3000 fps. The cow was quartering strongly to me at around 200 yards. At the shot she dropped and never moved, because the bullet entered the chest just inside the near shoulder, clipped the bottom of the spine and ended up somewhere in the innards beyond.
I had plenty of confidence in that load because have used it before on somewhat smaller deer--and Eileen used a 130-grain TTSX from her custom .308 Winchester to drop another big cow at 250 yards a few years ago, also quartering toward us, and that bullet was loaded to 2850 fps to reduce recoil.
Might also mention something Finn Aagaard wrote years ago in an article titled "Guns of the Settlers," about his first several decades of hunting in Kenya. He started keeping a hunting journal in 1956, and after many years came to the conclusion that the specific big game cartridge didn't matter all that much, because blue wildebeest (supposedly one of the toughest of plains game) ran about as far after being shot through the lungs with any cartridge from the smaller 6.5mms to the .375 H&H. His last sentence reads: “Even today, as it always has been, it is not the rifle or its cartridge that matters so much, but rather the skill and knowledge of the rifleman-hunter who is using it.”
In hunting Manitoba and Saskatchewan, I'm continually amazed at the chamberings that show up with first-time hunters to Canada. "These are a lot bigger deer than we have in PA, FL, etc., ergo, 300 Win Mags, 300 WBY and 300 RUM"........just to kill a big-bodied whitetail. And many of those were brand-spanking-new rifles purchased for the hunt.
Common sense and experience sure do go a long way - it'd behoove Mr. Boddington to exercise a bit of both.
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