Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters 6.5 Creedmoor for Elk & Moose under 300yd - what bullet

If you can find any, 156gr SP Oryx Bonded Bullets

I dont hate the.Creedmore I just didn't fall for the Hornady pushed hype.

LFC,

Well, gee. I happened to have killed hundreds of big game animals, and been next to family members and hunting partners who killed a bunch more. The total is now close to 1000, and I didn't just look at the exit hole (if there was one), or poke something into the entrance hole, to judge how they worked. Accomplished this while hunting in 14 different countries, often on culls. One in Africa lasted a month, and a total of 12 other guys took part, killing animals from pronghorn-size to eland and Cape buffalo weighing around 1500 pounds. That was the 3rd cull I went on in Africa, and since the other guys who went were mostly rifle loonies, a bunch of different bullets and cartridges were tested--including the Barnes TSX, which was pretty new then, and a bullet LB claims fails to open quite often. They were used in sizes from 140-grain .270 to 270-grain .375. One guy killed 24 animals with his .270 WSM and the 140, and gee, every one expanded--which I could tell by spending time in the skinning shack every evening to observe animals being taken apart. In fact none of the TSXs failed to expand.

But have also taken part in such hunts from New Zealand to Europe, as well as several U.S. states, probably 8-10 in Texas alone. Did this most frequently from around 2000 to 2010, when I spent close $100,000 on travel and hunting, in large part to find out how various bullets worked. This can be tested to a certain extent in various kinds of media, which I also have done considerably. But the best way to determine how big game bullets work is to shoot a lot of big game, then take them apart to find out exactly what happened.

Igloo,

Thanks!

By the way, I also never saw the early, massive publicity campaign that Hornady supposedly gave the 6.5 Creedmoor--and I'm in the business. Saw a few press releases, and an article or two in magazines, probably it was designed and introduced as a target round, not a hunting cartridge.

Finally started getting interested three years after it was introduced, in 2010, when a local gun store stocked a few Ruger Hawkeyes--hunting rifles in walnut stocks--and the word got out that they shot very well. Bought one and a few boxes of ammo, and mine did shoot very well, and eventually I wrote an article about it for HANDLOADER magazine, after hunting with it some.

At that time it still wasn't getting much publicity in the hunting sector, and in fact guys were warning others they might not want to buy one, because it might flop and brass would be hard to find. So as part of my article I described how to fire-form 6.5 Creedmoor cases from .22-250 brass, using the "Cream of Wheat" method.

Eventually word of mouth got around enough that so many magazines ran articles on the 6.5 Creedmoor that there did appear to be a massive PR campaign--but from what I could see that occurred at least 5 years after the cartridge was introduced. At that point some magazine editors started refusing to run articles that even mentioned the 6.5 Creedmoor because so many appeared in various places. One of those included the editor who bought my article in 2010. In fact I phoned him from the store, asking if he'd be interested, because otherwise I wasn't that interested in buying the rifle.

But Hornady certainly never asked me to wrote anything on the 6.5 Creedmoor, and I was well-acquainted with those folks--and was writing for far more magazines back then. I started "semi-retiring" a few years ago, dropping some magazines I'd been appearing in regularly for a long time.

It's CDS, CBHS, sometimes both.

Things I have learned from Llama Bob in the past few weeks:

All Barnes bullets typically fail to expand
Nosler Accubonds and Partions are tier 2 bullets
The 30-06 is an inferior hunting cartridge
The 6.5x55 is slightly less inferior than the 30-06
NULA rifles are a terrible design
Mule Deer is generally an idiot
Simulation and load to velocity is a better way of load development than using manuals

I can't wait for today's lesson.

🤣

I remember when the .260 Remington came out. Few complained and belly-ached about that cartridge. But a ballistic twin comes out with a 1:8" twist rate and a little more room to seat long bullets, and its the most hated thing around. Some people just cannot accept technological changes.

I'm inclined to believe that some people resent (subconsciously maybe) the "easy button" nature of the 6.5 Creedmoor.