Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters 6.8 SPC

Anyone take any game with one?
Here a Canadian gentleman and his son have taken a Musk Ox and an eight foot Grizz with one shot each with the 6.8

http://forums.accuratereloading.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/7621043/m/4191033741

I am interested in hear the bullet used and the results. I have one and thus far I have been favorably impressed with the cartridge

This cartridge seems like it would be a natural fit for youth rifles, a dedicated rifle for women and for making up into a lightweight "mountain rifle" for all-around use.

It apparently kicks less than a .243 but drives a 115gr, .277-cal bullet fast enough to be a good deer load out to 300 yards or so.

I hope it catches on as a sporting cartridge!

I was hoping it would "catch on" a lot more than it has, so far. Like LC brass being manufactured, etc.

It is currently a centerfire specialty cartridge, like a 250 savage or 257 Rob.

I wish they had brought it out in 6.5, so we could use the Nosler 100 gr partition. Might have had a squabble with Grendel over that.

Sycamore

http://www.ssarmory.com/success.aspx

JWP,

Check out the link above. There are some examples there.

The 110 AB the 85 & 110 grain TSX, the 95grain TTSX and the 110grain Sierra Pro Hunter are SSA's most popular hunting loadsm, with the Pro Hunter being the most popular.

I have taken a few pigs with the 6.8 SPC, and one coyote. It works very well indeed.

The bullets I used were mostly a prototype of the Barnes Tipped TSX bullet that weighted, if I recall correctly, 95 grains. It worked great.

I was hunting with Bill Wilson (Wilson Combat), who also makes pretty nice AR's, on his ranch in east Texas. Bill and his wife have shot a number of whitetails with the 110-grain Nosler AccuBond, and like it better than the Barnes for that purpose, because the AB kills quicker. For pigs Bill likes the deeper penetration of the Barnes.

My new AR is chambered in 6.8. It has a White Oak Armory 18", mid length gas, spec II, 11-twist barrel. It shoots 110s very well -- around .75 MOA. I've killed several feral hogs so far with the 110 Accubond with great results. All shots so far have been within 100 yards, but it's done the job quite well.

I like it!

Do you think the round's popularity with the black rifle set hurts it with "mainstream" hunters?

No idea, but I doubt it, simply because ARs have become increasingly more "mainstream."

Either way, as long as I can get brass, I don't particularly care how popular it is. I wouldn't choose it for a bolt action, but I think it makes a lot of sense in the AR15 platform.

what can the 6.8SPC do that a .223 with a 62 grain TSX cannot do? I think nothing except cost more, require costly special magazines, require a special bolt, and be a "specialty cartridge forever"

Where the rubber meets the road, prolly not much, but it will make a larger diameter wound channel and wreck more of a critter's clockwork while penetrating as deep, so I believe it's more immediately lethal on larger hogs. Having double the bullet mass means that the bullet can expand to larger frontal diameter and still penetrate as well as the 62 TSX. I've never not had complete penetration so far. It may be a "specialty cartridge" in a way, but now that I have brass and dies, it's no more "specialty" than anything else, since it uses .277" bullets. Magazines aren't that much more expensive, and you only have to buy them once. Bolts are readily available and work just fine with standard AR15 bolt carriers. You do lose 5 rounds on the largest magazines, but that's no big deal. Overall, building mine didn't cost much more than building a 5.56 out of the same brand components.

Plus, the biggest reason is I already have several .223's, and I like having something different just 'cause.

Fairly easy to say that the 6.8 offers nothing over the 5.56 from the comfort of our computers, but ask some fellas who's life depends on there weapons and most will tell you they will gladly take the 6.8 given the option.

People forget that the 6.8 was not made for hunting or long range shooting, its purpose is was short and midrange combat and at that it does very well and there is no question about it outperforming the 5.56 round in those categories. However you start putting the 6.8 to tasks that it was never meant to do and it falls short, but that is to be expected.

It is a legal caliber on deer in my state. The .223 is not.

It also was designed to perform optimally in a short, 16", barrel w/o overly loud noise and distracting flash.

It uses a wide range of bullets and factory fodder from 85 to 130 grs, including some of the high performance type, as MD pointed out.

Ruger makes it in its new AR and mini 14 Ranch Rifle. Ruger also made some in a compact 77. Many --most?-- AR makers now offer it.

The big strike against it is that Remington was the first to bring it out and, no surprise, Big Green cocked it up again. The original issued rifle and caliber design were wrong. The first bolt guns were made to ape full size rifles and were widely shunned by the buying public. Some weaker ARs blew up with high performance TAC rounds due to the orignal case design flaw. The new SPC II (no lnger designated Remington) chamberings took care of that glitch.

Rampant ignorance about the round continues -- largely because none of the major companies chamber -- or advertise-- the SPC II and thus gun mags ignore it.

1B

All things being equal, as far as the rifle/bbl length etc., the 6.8 spc will send an 85gr TSX at the same speed the .223 will send that 62 gr TSX.

Now add in the advantage that the 6.8spc can send a 110gr TSX at nearly the same velocity that the .223 can send a 70gr TSX and the potential uses open up further.

Your question is kinda like asking what a .270 Win can do that a .243Win can't.

Like most military cartidges, this one makes alot of sense for alot of people. That's no guarantee that it will be the next .30-06 or .308 popularity-wise however. Still, I think it's far enough along to say that it's an accepted and popular enough round.

That about hits it right there.

IF they had released it in the ADL and the model 7, in normal and youth versions, and made some very standard, inexpensive corelokt ammo, they would have had a winner.

Although, Rem is NOT in the business of supporting chamberings, they follow the money.

If I go to wally world, I see 22lr, 223, 243, 30-30, 308, 270, 30-06, 7 mag, 300 mag. (sometimes 22-250) in the ammo case.

Of those, I only shoot the 22lr and 223 regularly. BUT the rest of the world, in Arizona at least, can do fine with those, probably 90% of every rifle cartridge shot in AZ is one of those.

Another problem for Rem, was that the case head required them to carry 3 sizes of bolt(head) in the Short Action. Not good for volume business, or for wildcatters, hard to pick up a cheap 700 6.8 action.

Sycamore

The 223 can cling those bullets a might bit faster than your comparison.


Guessing don't get old around this place.

Most people who buy the 6.8 SPC do not buy them because their lives depend on it. Which begs the question: Why do they buy it?

The answer eludes me. There are plenty of other rounds who will do any job better. It must be a matter of preference, which is fine.

The way the round was marketed left a bad taste in my mouth. Clearly, it was aimed at the civilian market, yet posed as an alternative to the 5.56. The AMU at Ft. Benning helped develop the round, at least in the initial phase. The OIC of that unit spoke to its development at a meeting I attended, he had nothing negative or positive to say about it. When asked if it would replace the 5.56, he pointed out that we were in the middle (then) of two wars and to introduce a new rifle would be logistically and realistically unfeasible.

The hysterical gunwriter Lee Hoots, (the disparager of the .270) compounding his record of hyperbolic statements, said the US Government was contributing to the deaths of GIs by NOT adopting this round, thus doing his part to erode confidence in the 5.56. I don't know, maybe Hoots has a military record to bolster this claim, but I don't think he does.

Dissatisfaction in the 5.56 comes almost exclusively from gun writers and mall commandos. If there was a problem with the 5.56 from a military standpoint, it would be all over the media. Like it was in 66.

As for killing grizzley bears, I recall a Savage add that said the .303 Savage completely penetrated a griz, front to back. Hmmmm....Inuits kill polar bears with .243s and (I've heard) with .22 Hornets, but it's not a round I'd choose.

So it's a good round for...well...uh...coyotes? Pigs? So is about any other centerfire cartridge. I don't see a need this cartridge fills.

In an AR15, what are they?
...assuming by "any job," that includes big game hunting.

What this cartridge does is fill a niche in THE AR15 that wasn't covered already prior to its introduction. The cartridge size constraints of the AR15, which the 6.8 was developed around, don't apply to bolt actions. It never was intended for use in bolt actions at all, and there are dozens of better choices in a bolt action. If you're even thinking in terms of bolt actions, the 6.8 really should not enter your thought process in the first place, and Big Green would be foolish to chamber the 700 for it. It was developed for military use to provide more lethality than the 5.56 offers, within the dimensional confines of the AR15/M16. It does that. Despite that fact, it hasn't been adopted by the military for whatever reason, at least not on a large scale.

In civilian use, if one wanted to use an AR15 for hunting deer sized game, prior to the introduction of the 6.8 and other 5.56 alternatives, you had a choice of marginal chamberings in the AR15 or going to the larger, heavier, less standardized, more expensive AR10 platform for .308 based cases. In some states, .22 cal centerfires are illegal for deer hunting. The 6.8 (and the 6.5 Grendel and .264 LBC) allows you to use all AR15 components except bolt head, barrel, and magazine, so you get increased capability with a round that works within the confines of an AR15. Even in going the 6.8 route, you spend less $ and have a greater choice of compatible component parts with less overall weight with the AR15 vs. AR10. That's all the cartridge is really good for, and outside of that, there are much better choices. Every choice we make in rifles involves one tradeoff or another; this is no different. Within that framework, however, it makes a lot of sense for someone who enjoys shooting an AR and wants more power than .223 offers.

It will never achieve widespread popularity in the civilian market unless the military decides to adopt it in a large % of M16s. But, so what? It's at least a commercially available round at present, and many of us shoot wildcat cartridges that involve resizing some other parent brass to create, and somehow that isn't viewed as an obstacle. As long as brass is readily available and one handloads, that's no big deal.

You exactly highlight its weaknesses. The 30-06 was developed for the 03 Springfield, yet it has increased its capabilities in many other guns. This is true with virtually every round EXCEPT the 6.8, in fact. The only other I can think of is that FN round for their automatic rifle.

Limit a round to just one platform and it's not going to work for most people. Few people will buy an AR for hunting deer, although the .223 is legal in my state and a whole lot of folks use it, not many use the AR to hunt deer.

Not true anymore. ARs are wildly popular for hunting now, and 6.8 is a pretty popular AR chambering these days, as evidenced by the fact that Rock River, Stag Arms, and other AR manufacturers offer it as a standard chambering option. At last year's SHOT show it was clearly evident that ARs and AR-related accessories have been dominating the shooting industry for the past few years. There's nothing rare or exotic about 6.8 SPC. I can buy factory ammo for it at nearly every gun store in my area, plus Bass Pro and Cabelas.

When one discusses 6.8 SPC the assumption is that we're talking ARs, since that is pretty well where use of this cartridge is limited to. In that realm, it is a very useful, practical cartridge. Bolt actions will forever be my preferred hunting rifle platform, but ARs are fun to play with and they have their usefulness. As rampant as feral hogs are where I live, a 6.8 chambered AR makes a lot of sense. They are out of control pest animals with no bag limits, no season, and no limitations on time of day or means to kill them. The AR gives me much faster follow-up and higher magazine capacity than any bolt gun, so when hogs show up in large groups, I can take more of them before they leave.

As a deer hunting rifle, a 6.8 SPC AR has very mild recoil. That, combined with the adjustable stock on mine means that I can easily adjust the LOP to fit my 13 year old daughter so she can use it while hunting with me. I can't do with any of my traditionally stocked rifles without buying a "youth" stock or cutting off one of my existing stocks. The adjustable buttstock also allows me to move the stock down to its shortest length, making it more compact and take up less room in cases.

As a nighttime predator & hog hunting rifle, the extra picatinny rails on the AR are handy to mount lights to enable me to light up the target and see through my scope in total darkness. It is legal to hunt predators and hogs at night where I live because they are considered non-game species.