Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles More good news for 6.5 Creedmoor shooters!

Hornady is offering a 129 grain Interlock hunting load in their least expensive, American Whitetail, line.

Nice!

If anything keeps this cartridge around, it will not be that it offers anything new, but that there is very good factory ammunition being made for it.

Factory ammunition and a SAAMI specified 8" twist rate. The lack of those 2 things really hurt the 260 Rem. Some Lapua brass would be nice, but that won't have much (any?) affect on long term popularity.

David

I got 3 boxes of it last week.

Jeff, have you heard anything else about the runs of brass WW was supposed to do this summer? Specifically 7 WSM?

Also, tried to PM you about a rifle you mentioned selling, but your PM box is full.

Nice i have been shooting the 120gmx superformance

The Hornady factory ELD-M ammo is scary accurate. Out of a handful of groups, I don't think it's ever been over .5" out of a Ruger American Predator. Looking forward to trying ELD-X ammo. My loads with RL17 are in the .5-.6 range so I guess that'll do too.

The popularity of the Creedmoor is really soaring. It's great to see a reasonably priced hunting round for it being produced.

I've great luck with the whitetail load in 270, 30-06 and 308. It has been surprisingly accurate.

I bought three boxes of it last evening. The price was right at just a sniff over $20 per box.

I have three 264 win mags, two Sako L-61's and a pre 64 Westerner. All with 26 inch barrels. I like them a lot. I bought a Savage hunter-predator in 6.5 Creedmoor. It has a 24 inch barrel. Out to 350 yards it kills deer and pigs just as well. Burns a whole lot less powder. I wish Remington would chamber the 6.5 Creed in the 700.

Nothing wrong with the .260 except poor execution. At this point, the CR makes more sense due to more choices being available. Gotta think the Lapua brass can't be far off, but based on the Hornady .243 brass I'm using, it ain't bad.

Does Hornady still put the load data on the 6.5 ammo boxes?

Pappy, the Hornady brass is trash - soft, primer pockets are consistently shallow, flash holes are egg not round, and neck thickness varies by at least 0.002". Winchester is making some and it is decent, which is what I am using now, but the two newest 6.5's I have had built are chambered in 260 with a 298 neck and throated for 140 bergers at magazine length. Until Lapua makes brass for the Creedmoor, the 260 much better meets my needs. And it is a good 50-70 fps faster. However, these are my PRS guns. I don't think I would worry as much in a hunting rifle. Although, 6.5x47 seems to be picking up a following.

yeah. some folk don't like to prep brass.

I ran 50 .243s through the collet die just now and there might be one that has a flash hole that is ever so slightly out of round, but I can't be sure, even viewing it on the inside with a decapping pin inserted. I would imagine that drilling the holes entails that risk somewhat. They are all centered nicely and of course, burr free.

I don't have a ball mic and the hand trimmer didn't touch the mouths, so I couldn't eyeball the necks. That'll have to wait till later, as will deciding if they're soft or not.
The case mouths were all round, square edged, and ding and nick free, unlike some.

Wouldn't exactly say I don't like it, but after doing a couple hundred LC .308s, I might be a little tired of it just now.

Can someone explain this to me? And please pardon my ignorance. I can understand a target shooting/ competition load needing to be inexpensive, but do people really fire that much hunting ammo to have cost be much of a factor? I guess working up a load would require some bullets, and maybe if you're talking a varmint round, where you're shooting tons of pests. But for big game? I'd think a bullet could cost $5 a piece and it still wouldn't be much, given how little are shot. I'm probably way off base, but I'm curious.

Combine inexpensive ammo, like this, and inexpensive rifles, like the Howa 1500 and RAR-Predator, and you get a synergistic marketing effect that makes the manufacturers of the firearms and ammunition happy. Cheap and available ammo prompts people to buy rifles chambered for that ammo.

Target/competition ammo is often more expensive because it is produced to a higher standard with more expensive bullets.

Federal's American Eagle target loads are about as inexpensive as the American Whitetail hunting loads.

In the grand scheme of things, you are right. The cost of a round of hunting ammo is just a drop in the bucket. Even if you go to the range once a year with your hunting rifle and burn a box of ammo, the cost is inconsequential.

I was hoping you were going to say that Tikka is going to chamber a T3 superlight for the Creedmoor.

But good on Hornady for putting together some cost efficient hunting rounds for the folks who run Creedmoors.

Ten demerits for using the word "synergistic" in your reply, or anywhere for that matter!

I've heard whispers that Tikka is going to expand their 6.5 CM offerings from their original foray with the CTR to the rest of their line.

I bought a superlight chambered for 260 last fall because I couldn't get it in a Creedmoor. the pork and venison I shot with it didn't know the difference, I don't guess.

I really do like the Creedmoor, though.

All that's going to help, but it's still going to be tough for the CR to make the change to a standard sporting round, just as it was for the .260. They need to get rifles out there to be seen and talked about and pushed by the gun dealers. Lots of guys are going to stick with what their relatives and buddies use. Things were probably a bit easier when there were three big outdoor magazines that everybody read, with three prominent gun writers that called the tune on the market. Even then, it took years for stuff to catch on, and companies don't have the patience for that now as evidenced by all the rounds that have come and gone since 2000, some of them pretty good.

Just checked the pockets on 26 .243 cases; all are in spec very close to minimum. Ran a uniformer in a few and it barely scratched the bottom.

Maybe you got a bad batch, or use "tall" primers. The specs for primers and pockets can overlap, causing high primers with some combinations.

Some folks think .357 SIG is a fad. I'm going to keep it around even if I have to do it singlehandedly. I love that cartridge.

My best understanding is the Creed was designed around all the things that seem to get bitched about with SA cartridges by the "pros". Magbox length, bullet seating depth, utilizing case capacity, high BC bullets, and properly twisted barrels. My understanding is 1:8 is SAAMI spec. Hornady cut out all the drama of load development by offering the 143 ELDX at $30/box. Someone can correct me, but there isn't another out of the box SA load that's going to touch it and sits on the shelf of your local sporting goods store. And as far as I'm concerned, Hornady may have nailed it with the 162 ELDX ammo as well. So now a guy shooting factory ammo ain't quite sucking as much hind tit.

And I've always been a fan of sub $20/box CF ammo for whatever reason. My last trip to SW I found 1 offerering of 260 Rem and 5 of 6.5 Creed.

And since reloading is the equivalent of watching paint dry, it's got a lot of things going on the right direction.

Maybe it's not worth glazing a knuckle, but it is what it is......

There are more idioms in your reply than I can shake a stick at.

Any help that a newly introduced product gets is good for it. The 260's introduction was fumbled from the day that it was introduced. Limited availability and variety of factory ammo, no economy priced rifles to shoot the hard to find ammo in, ROT issues, etc., etc., etc. Don't forget the the 7mm-08 was originally touted as a cartridge for shooting silhouette competition. Personally, I don't care if the 6.5 Creedmoor is a commercial success or not, since it will always be a reasonably easy case to make from 243/308 cases.

Or .22/250 apparently. With all the long-range folks that use it, I doubt there will be an issue.

The creedmoor would be an ideal kid's or wife's hunting cartridge if it were chambered in a lightweight bolt action hunting rifle.

It is a 243 with a more efficient bullet.

Here's hoping that it gets away from being chambered in target rifles.

Prime Ammo is making some great 6.5 Creedmoor and .260 ammo at reasonable prices. The 6.5 creed was so popular they've sold out, it was around $25/box and that's RUAG (read Norma) brass and bullets.

Exactly. Hell, I little Ruger 77 RSI in 6.5CM would be 'cute'


I want to do a lightweight 6.5CM build

A 77RSI in 6.5 Creedmoor would be the cat's a$$. I'm not the world's biggest fan of Kimber, but even a standard 84M would be a big help.

Amen to both.

I've got plenty of rifles to see me through the golden years, but a SS RSI in a nice mild round to match my SS 77/22 RSI might get the money in my pocket "jumping", as my wife puts it.

That could be, I have no idea. All of my Hornady brass was purchased back in 2013 when the rifle was new. I use Federal GM210M primers and am looking for a 0.131" deep pocket.

Since the max pocket spec is .1320, that's pretty deep. I'm going to prime mine this afternoon, so I'll see how if my close-to-minimum brass does with regular 210s. The last .243s I loaded used WLRs, but I sent all mine back for a refund after the problems started.

An article I read a while back (forget where) had a chart on primer dimensions, and there's a lot of variance in height and diameter, even in the same box IIRC. Some of that likely gets ironed out when seated, I'd imagine.

The creedmoor is here to stay and its a well designed cartridge. The only thing that bugs me is that they tried to make it short enough for a SA and then spec'd it with a .200" or .199" freebore. No loading vld type bullets mag length and kissing in a saami throated factory gun. I love mine but it takes AW mags.

I wouldn't mind a 6 creed and maybe a 7 creed with 162's.

Bb