Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Why the Infatuation with the 6.5 Creedmoor?

If I wanted a 6.5mm in a long action for general deer hunting duties, I think I'd just buy a .270win and down load it a little!

John,

Remington seems to be particularly ham-handed when it come to marketing new products.

I doubt that there has ever been enough consumer demand in the U.S. for any .264"/6.5mm bore cartridge, so I have no idea why Remington chose to commercialize the 6.5-308. Maybe somebody at Remington had seen Field of Dreams and had a "build it and they will come" epiphany. Regardless of why they chose to go with a .264"/6.5mm on the 51mm 308 case, they did a piss-poor job of providing a scenario for its success. If they had done an equally poor job with a commercialize 25 Souper the outcome might have been the same. Or, it might have been different 'cause there is more love for .257" bore rifles in the U.S.

When it comes to new cartridges, it is a good idea to bet against those that I have liked. The 17HM2, 25 WSSM, 260, 7MM SAUM, 307, 338 Fed, and 356 have all struggled.

I thought the 260 was a product of the silhouette shooters wanting something with a bit more ass for the ram. Maybe that was the 7-08.

Not being a looney or a writer, my assumptions were that cartridge development would have roots in competition, similar to how car development gets somewhat tied to racing. And similarly, the real "edge" is gained by the competitor not the daily commuter.

Capable round the 6.5, but for 99.9% of the people who hunt and shoot a .270 would do just as well.

Flavor of the month for all the ballistic heads out there.

The 7mm-08 was originally a silhouette cartridge. It was languishing before Layne Simpson championed it and it took off. Simpson had designed and written up his own short 7mm cartridge, the 7mm SGLC (Simpson's Good Little Cartridge) that, IIRC, he had made up in a Weatherby .224 Varmintmaster switch-barrel rifle.

I was never a fan of the 270, but on this date, my primary antelope/deer/elk hunting rifles are both 270s, a CLR and a Remington 760.

I suspect part of the reason for the .260's introduction was Jim Carmichel. He was into competitive shooting in various disciplines, to varying degrees, and as I recall also claimed to have had a major hand in developing the .260, even though Ken Waters wrote about his ".263 Express" decades before the .260 appeared.

I also suspect Remington's ineptness at promoting some of their cartridges (and other products) is simply due to being a huge corporation, where one department doesn't know what the other's up to. One of the famous studies of how companies and promotion work suggests that more than 150 employees makes a company too large to concentrate it's efforts on one goal.

I got to know one former marketing manager for Remington quite well, who explained that often the marketing department was handed some new product the R&D department had come up with, without any market research, and told to promote it. The R&D department, of course, often had employees who were shooting enthusiasts and had their own pet projects, which very few other people thought were nearly as neat as they did. (Which explains the 6.5 Remington Magnum, among other things.)

But that sort of disorganization is hardly limited to Remington. Winchester has done the same sort of things repeatedly, and even though Ruger is probably better at developing and promoting products than either Remington or Winchester these days, they've also had their share of clunkers. This wasn't as common when Bill Ruger was the company.

The 26 Nosler is a big success, despite the many objections and projections of rifle loonies like those here on the Campfire. It could also certainly be said that there was no pent-up demand for such a cartridge before the 26's introduction, though the .264 Winchester Magnum has been making something of a comeback over the past decade due to the increased interest in long-range hunting.

One of the reasons for the 26's success is that Nosler is a small company where everybody knows each other. The owners are not a bunch of investors who don't really care about firearms and hunting and have no input other than suggestions on how to grow the bottom line. Instead they're rifle loonies who love to hunt, and are also THE upper management. As a result the entire company has common goals, and the various departments are in constant communication. Whether that stays the same as the company grows (and it is growing) is another question.

Good piece, JB.

I hope Nosler can stay focused as they grow, which as you say, is central to their success.

Don't you think powders now available are a major factor in .264 WM and 26 Nos performance? We now have a much better selection than when the .264 WM was introduced.

LR target shooting has for sure enhanced 6.5 mm popularity.

DF

Well, yeah!

It might be a little early to declare the .26 a success, at least in the same way as say, the 7mm Rem. Once the churn subsides, we'll see. It's definitely a niche round. How big that niche is is hard to say.

Do you have a feel for if and when they'll release it to the rest of the industry so others can make rifles and ammo without paying a fee? Will we be seeing a .26 Ruger American and Federal blue box at Walmart any time soon? (Okay, that last bit was a joke)

I also have to wonder if they should have waited a bit before releasing the .28 or were they afraid the wildcatters would beat them to the punch?

Nosler never wanted to compete with Remington, Ruger, Winchester, etc. in making $500 rifles or $25-a-box ammo. Instead they wanted to offer higher-end products, a more specialized niche.

The 26 never will be a world-wide standard cartridge like the 7mm Remington Magnum, but it is a major financial success for Nosler. And, no, it isn't too early to say that.

The 26 is a SAAMI cartridge, not a proprietary cartridge. I doubt they are worried in any way about wildcatters.

If they're in the black, then that pretty much settles it

Good company. I hope some conglomerate doesn't buy them out and screw it all up.

Reamers can be had in SAAMI 26 Nos.

Not a hard build.

DF