Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Whats the best cartridge developed in last 20 years.

Quite old, but sorta new (at least to those of us who have that round in modern rifles).

Modern pressure loads do wake it up...

DF

More the last 50 years than the last 20 though. There again, a lot of developments in world of cartridges are older than is commonly realised.

The 30-06!! While not developed in the last 20 years, it is the king and has survived for over 110 years!!!! This record trumps any new cartridge!

I love the 30-06, but, of course, three bourbons tonight might cloud my opinion! But then, it is a great cartridge.

I'd say 338 Fed for my uses.

For me, 6.8spc or 6.5 Creedmoor.

.458 SOCOM, it's a .45-70 in an autoloader.

If you fancy long range, I think the 28 Nosler is going to make an impact. It duplicates ballistics available in wildcats but as a factory offering it's pretty impressive.

Looks like the 17HMR, 204 Ruger and 6.5 Creedmoor are seeing more mentions than the others. I own a 17 and a Creedmoor and see why they have found favor.

Common denominator, Steve Hornady and Dave Emary.

What a go, guys...

DF

Then there's the Hornady version of the .17 Hornet, which is also apparently doing quite well, and in some ways is superior to the wildcat .17 Hornet.

I wondered why Hornady made it a little shorter, but then realized one of the consistent problems with the .22 Hornet is fitting ammo loaded with plastic-tipped 40-grain bullets in most Hornet magazines. The 35-grain Hornady V-Max isn't nearly as good ballistically as a 40-grain V-Max, and the same problem would also arise with 20-25 grain V-Maxes in the "full length" .17 Hornet. Shortening the case a little (something done for a similar reason with the 6.5 Creedmoor) solved the problem, and with today's powders the .17 Hornady Hornet can match or even exceed the velocities from the wildcat .17 Hornet.

Hornady also hasn't done too bad with some of their other cartridges they've developed with Ruger, especially the .375, though the .300 and .338 RCM's haven't done so well. Hornady seems to be batting for a higher average than most other companies with new cartridge introductions since 2000.

The answer to your question would be best answered by the ammo manufacturers......

I'd have to agree with this. Though it is not my personal pick I've heard more about the 17 HMR I believe than any new cartridge.

For myself personally I'm still getting it done with a 22LR.

If the 22 is lacking I step up to the 223.





FOREST

6.5X47 Lapua. The creed case, and the 300 WSM.

I don't kow how a feller could resist adding his two cents to this thread...

I am an old guy who really likes to shoot. I like guns that don't kick my brains loose so I can actually have fun shooting them. I have long since quit playing that silly game so beloved by the human male called "Mine's bigger than your's".

I vote for the 17 HMR. I bought mine about five years ago and spent a couple of years accurizing it. The last year I made a custom stock for it. I can shoot it in small, informal benchrest matches, can hunt small game with it and it's light and easy to carry in the field.

There's one old writer whose works I really revered... no names but... short guy, big hat. The old phartte had a way with words. The last article I read of his, he was hunting antelope with a 338 mag. Made me wonder what he would take on a grizzly bear hunt... I mean, how do you carry around a 6" cannon from a battleship?

If you really like to shoot... the 17 HMR is an absolute delight.

So much for the LAST 20 years. What will be the best--or even a useful--cartridge developed in the NEXT 20 years? It seems to to me that there are almost no remaining gaps that could be filled.

Nothing new in the centerfire will come along until the ammo manufactures can produce ammo other than the top 10 cartridges in sales volume.

Doc

Oh, they'll still try, because once in a while a new cartridge takes off and sells a bunch of rifles. But most new rounds lose money, because it takes considerable money to develop one, which means they've got to sell a lot of rifles to break even.

I must comment for the second time on this thread that most of the "new" centerfire cartridges mentioned on this thread are just tweaks of really old cartridges, especially the various 6.5's mentioned. Several that not many Americans even know existed appeared very early on in Europe, and even the .260 was a wildcat long before Remington and Jim Carmichel claimed to "develop" it. I believe Ken Waters made up his version, called the .263 Express, in the early 1960's.

Even the .300 WSM is just another version of wildcats going back to the 1950's, and all it does is reproduce the .300 H&H in a shorter case. Of course, some people still believe Winchester's PR claims that the .300 WSM's case shape results in ballistic magic allowing higher velocities with less powder than other .300's, but so far no pressure-testing has found that magic.

The main reason so many shooters believe many cartridges are "new" is most shooters don't know much about the history of cartridge development. I suppose even the .17 HMR could be considered a tweak of the 5mm Remington--but unlike Remington, Hornady didn't try to develop a rimfire cartridge to directly compete with Winchester's .22 Magnum.

The original factory load of the 5mm was a 38-grain bullet at a claimed 2100 fps, but it simply didn't exceed the original 40-grain load of the .22 Magnum by enough to make any difference, especially in public perception. But the .17 HMR's an entirely different deal ballistically, using much lighter bullets at much higher velocity--and is also consistently far more accurate than the .22 Magnum. Which is why it became so popular, so quickly.

In contrast, most of the new cartridges mentioned here don't do anything much older cartridges didn't do ballistically, except fit in shorter magazines. But that's because shorter actions became popular, requiring new cartridges to fit them. The basic ballistic performance isn't any different than a pile of other rounds that were developed long ago, some more than a century.

IF anyone is saying the 6.5 Creedmore then they should really be saying the 260 Remington as for all practical purposes they're the same round that fits in the same action and shoots the same bullets. All the Creedmore did was split the popularity between the two which will pretty much mean neither will gain the popularity that they should as they're great rounds.

Yeah, they're both at least as good as the 6.5x54 Mauser (not Mannlicher-Schoenauer), which appeared around 1900 for use in short Mauser actions.

6.5CM and .260 don't shoot all the same bullets equally well. When you get into the really long-nose, heavier bullets developed for long-range shooting, the CM works just a little better. And since competition is all about stacking up tiny advantages, once the idea existed, the reality had to be created.

If the CM had been standardized first, there would be no reason for the .260 to exist. But with the history that's out there (short as it is) for the .260, there has been a body of load data developed that doesn't exist yet for the CM. So if I want to have a good choice of hunting bullets with lab-safe load data, and don't care about long range competition so much, the .260 is currently a better choice. IMO.

Load data is also what distinguishes both of these from the 6.5x55 in my mind. Plenty of people say you can load the 6.5 to higher pressures for modern rifles, but I've searched, and when it comes to lab-tested data from reputable companies, even the data indicated as being for modern rifles only still doesn't give the velocities of the SA newcomers. Until I become more of a gambler or buy a strain gauge setup, the newer cartridges seem to have an edge. All of them will kill stuff just fine, of course.


As for the next 20 years...
The past year and a half has seen the spark and flameout of something that could have been really cool for the AR platform. .375 Reaper is basically 300 Blackout done with a .308 case. A short-range hammer with no concerns about cost or availability of cases. Unfortunately, the guy who first tried to commercialize it was such a poor business person that the round is for all intents and purposes stillborn. From an outsider's perspective, it seems that the guy was far more interested in promoting how incredibly smart he was to have the idea and extracting every dollar he could get his hands on RIGHT NOW than to take the simple steps necessary to build a user base for a wildcat and develop some modest commercial legs. It will be a few years before anyone could expect to do anything with the concept without the guy trying to slap a lawsuit on them. Maybe he'll end up having to go through bankruptcy, and someone will get the right to develop the idea without unnecessary legal expenses. Currently, the people who were ready to go once there was something to actually buy are either trying to forget about it or changing lanes to .375 Socom.

OlongJohnson,

You should look up Vihtavuori data for the 6.5x55, as they list one load giving well over 2800 fps with 140's in a 26-inch barrel. Unlike American companies, Europeans aren't afraid to be provide modern data. That's somewhat irrelevant, however, because short actions have become the standard for smaller 6.5 cartridges in the U.S.A.

Many shoopters think a strain-gauge will reveal the "real" pressure of their handloads. In reality, a strain-gauge doesn't provide actual pressures, and direct strain-gauge readings typically run lower than piezo-electronic readings. This is all presented clearly in the A-Square manual by Dr. Gary Minton, who was in charge of the ballistics and ammo department at A-Square, but a number of other professional ballistic lab people told me the same things over the years. Strain gauges are used widely in the ammo and bullet business, but are reasonably accurate only when their readings can be adjusted with reference ammunition worked up with piezo equipment.