I'll say up front that I do not own a rifle chambered for the 6.5 Creedmoor. I do however own a couple of semi-customs chambered in 6.5x284. Both my 6.5x284s serve their purposes well.

That said, why does there seem to be such an infatuation with the 6.5 Creedmoor? Seems more and more manufacturers are chambering various rifles in this caliber.

Inquiring minds want to know . . . .

Like the .260, the Creedmoor kicks less and has longer barrel life than, say, a 6.5/.284. But unlike the .260, it was designed so very long 140-grain bullets with high BC's can be seated correctly in the neck, and yet the entire cartridge with fit easily in a 2.8-inch short-action magazine. And a lot of people think short-action rifles are more accurate, because the action's stiffer.

That's the list of reasons behind the 6.5 Creedmoor. They may or may not appeal to your particular strain of rifle loonyism.

It's sure fun to shoot, like a grown-up 22-250.

Along with bullet length considerations, the SAAMI drawings indicate to me that accuracy was in mind when neck and throat diameters/clearances were specified.

What John posted, plus the Hornady factory ammo is easily MOA capable, something most 260 ammo never was.

Definitely my favorite 6.5mm bore cartridge to shoot factory ammo in.

Being an early advocate of the 260, I was skeptical of the value of the 6.5 Creedmoor, but now I'm a believer. My 260s aren't getting much love since the 4 6.5 Creeds came home. The Vanguard 2 that I bought last February is, so far, the most accurate out of the box with factory ammo CF rifle that I've owned.

260,

Have you shot the RAR Predator yet? That one interests me

I'm thinkin' I might have to 'stick my toe in the water.' Maybe a 6.5 Creed in the Wby VGD2 as 260Remguy suggests.

what is the best length barrel on the 6.5 Creed?

I had a 26" Ruger Hawkeye factory rifle that shot EXTREMELY well, and velocities weren't that far behind a typical .270 Winchester. Kinda wish I'd never sold the rifle, but already had a fine custom 6.5x55....

And no I won't sell to you my ABolt long range 6.5 CM rifle. It is amazing with Hornady factory 120 and 140 gr. Stuff. Easy 1.5" at 300 yds, and both bullets shoot to nearly the same point of impact, the 120s about an 1" higher.

No, every time that I've wanted to go to the range and shoot the new rifles, something has come up. The weather forecast for next week is for fine/warm weather, so I'm planning to go on Monday or Tuesday and will let you know how it shoots. I am hoping that it will shoot as well as the Vanguard.

21 7/8"

Naw, its a metric round: 55.5 centimeters.

It has a cool name!!!

It's accurate, soft-recoiling, has decent long range ballistics, and a cute little thing. What more do you need?

It's a better designed case than the .260 remington that more easily fits in a short action.

Recently picked up a Ruger Hawkeye Predator. First time out shot groups under 1 inch. Very little recoil and great trigger. Haven't loaded my own as of yet but have all components and will soon. Temp scope on it , a Bushnell 3x9x40 Elite 4200. Next up, Burris Veracity 4x20x50.

Good point - let's not discount the appeal of a cool name, especially one that can be made even cooler by using its diminuative, "Creed".

Creed? Mine is named Apollo Creed. Polly for short.....

That would explain those red, white and blue swim trunks you wore last time we shot.....

It works....

Didnt the same thing happen with the 280AI

The weatherby vangaurd in 6.5 creedmoor is an excellent rifle. The magazine length and throat were properly done, and the #3 contour barrel is extremely accurate. For the money, it's a very good value.

I've never killed anything with mine yet, but it performs like the .260rem, and I've killed a bunch of game with the .260rem.

I have two Creedmoors, a Browning Long Range Hunter that shot 1/2" groups at 100 yards with factory Hornady 120 Amax's. It's a little heavy but will make a great bean field rifle. The other is a Weatherby Vanguard that I just bought and haven't shot. I sold a Ruger SS Hawkeye, it also shot lights out, I wasn't in love with that 26" barrel. Can't beat great accuracy and light recoil.

Sounds like a cool little round, will it compete with the 6.5 Swede as far as ballistics are concerned?

6.5 Creedmoor, 256 Newton, 260, and 6.5x55 all have approximately the same velocity potential, if all other variables are the same.

The catch being that the other variables are seldom the same, particularly with the 6.5x55 where the throat specs are all over the place. I have one of the Swedish sniper rifles from the 1940s that has a shorter throat than any of the other dozen or so Swedish military and commercial Mausers that I've had around the house.

10-4 260, was kinda wondering if the Creedmoor was loaded to much higher pressures like many of the more modern rounds.

Its MAP is 62,000 psi.

Thanks Mathman, may have to schedule a Creedmoor build one of these days.

Every single 6.5 Creedmoor that I've been around has been stupid accurate! I think that is perhaps the biggest selling point. That, and it hardly recoils at all. To me at least, I can't tell the difference between it and a .243 Win. Yet, it has some pretty good wind bucking characteristics and flat trajectory.

I've been looking for one in an S2 Vanguard but can't seem to locate one, so maybe will give Savage a try. I just want one. Easy accuracy just makes me a happy camper.

I'm lovin' my creedmoor.
Rebarrelled kimber.
23" Lilja #2 profile.
All the smithy had to do was turn down the diameter of the shank a little to match the original. Plus moan some about the extractor slot haha. I opened up the barrel channel on the stock a smidge and all was good. I was going to go with .260 but the smith had a nice new creedmoor reamer, plenty of brass there and was pretty enthusiastic about the cartridge so went with that.
With Talleys, Z3 3-9x36 and Vero Vellini sling it's 3200 grams. Dunno what that is in lbs but it suits me fine.
Shot this buck with it this morning as he was heading to a scrape.
Shot stretched 10 metres.
Projectile was 130 sierra HPBT gameking. Didn't exit but did bust up the lower offside shoulder.
Have shot four fallow with the gamekings. Two exited and two stayed inside. From that small sample they look like a good mix of penetration and "come apartedness" for fallow/whitetail size game to me. They aren't the pointiest bullet around and don't really take advantage of the Creedmoor's chamber dimensions but was what the local shop had. Am giving some Scirroco 130s a fly tomorrow.

I think that the Vanguards were a Cabela's special order. I think that they still have a few in inventory, as they didn't sell nearly as well as they shoot. I would rather have the RAR Predator than any of the Savages. I think that Howa is going to sell 1500s in 6.5 Creedmoor starting this year.

I keep looking at the RAR. I have a friend who now has 4 of them and loves them.

The only thing that has kept me away from them is that plastic stock. I just can't get used to the feel of it. I know that Boyds now makes an aftermarket stock for the RAR but once you start doing the 'add-on' thing, the economics of the RAR are kinda ruined. BUT, it still may be the way to go.

In the 6.5 Creedmoor column, I find myself with 2 Vanguards, a Marlin XS7 with a Savage barrel, and the RAR Predator. The Vanguards were $500 each, the Marlin was about $450, and the RAR-P was about $400. I prefer the Vanguards, but the RAR-P in 204 that I have is amazingly accurate and although it weighs in at 8 lbs., it is well balanced and doesn't feel (to me) at heavy as it is. The Vanguards have been restocked, one with a Boyds Prairie Hunter, heavier, and one with a McMillan McM Hunter, lighter. The swap to the McM stock made a big difference in the ergs and more user friendly, at least for this user, but doing so doubled the investment. Worth it? To me, yes. To other, only they would know. I will say that the synthetic stocks on the Vanguard2s seem an improvement over the older Vanguard stocks.

I bought a finish reamer and headspace gauges, so I'll be putting together a Remington 700 in 6.5 Creedmoor, just not sure on the configuration and when I'll find the time to do it.

Boxer installed a Boyds Classic, what used to be called the JRS Classic, on a RAR-Ranch Rifle in 223 that he appears to like. I just this past week ordered a Boyds Heritage, but haven't received it yet. Mine was just under $200 in laminated wood and with fleur-de-lis style "checkering".

I believe that Howa is cataloging the 1500 in 6.5 Creedmoor this year and would expect other Manufacturers to follow suit. If you live near a Cabeal's, you might check to see if they have any more of the Vanguard2s somewhere in their warehouses, as I believe that the V2s in 6.5 Creedmoor were a special run for Cabela's.

Mule Deer (as usual) did a fairly fine job of explaining this........and his words exempt my custom 6.5 X 55 from the discussion as it won't fit in a short action receiver.....at least the ones I choose to use.

The competition mainly is the .260 Remington.....a cartridge that is far ahead of it's sales....it simply isn't a very popular round and it should be.

Like a lot of Remington introductions....the 6mm Rem, the .280 Rem, the 8mmRem Mag, the 6.5 Rem Mag, the .350 Rem mag, the list goes on....the .260 Rem is a very fine round that just wasn't accepted by the buying public.

As to the Creedmore, it's advantage over the .260 Rem IMO isn't at all justified as it's marginal at best. I'll take my 6.5 X 55 over either of them.....but that's not in the same family.

Maybe the real debate should be about standard length actions and short actions.....again...very marginal gains in the short action....,,and heaven forbid that we might compare the .260 Creedmore to the venerable old .270 Winchester!....that just wouldn't be fair would it!

Make no mistake about it.....I have nothing at all against the Creedmore. It's a very fine round. I'm just waiting for someone to introduce the .294 keepsemfromfloppin. Now there is a cartridge that will go over big time!

I have one creedmoor, and 3 260Remington's. It's all personal preference. The creedmoor with a 140 grain or larger bullet is "supposed" to be able to get alittle more powder in it than the 260 Rem cartridge, alot of that probably depends on individual 260 barrels and how they are cut. Frankly, I really don't care because I run 120's most of the time anyway.

And the magazine box.

If I were building a 6.5 Creedmoor,it would have a short action, but a .260 would be built on a long action to seat the bullets way out. The whole appeal of the 6.5 CM, besides being scary accurate, is that the bullet does not intrude into powder space.

260's are scary accurate also, I do not think it is accurate to imply that the 6.5 Creedmoor is more accurate than a 260 Remington. They are both great cartridges.....

I have found that Hornady's 6.5 Creedmoor factory loads are much more accurate than any 260 factory loads that I've ever shot. I haven't shot much 260 factory ammo, as it wasn't on the shelves when I got my first 260, so I had to load my own. I've probably owned thirty 260s, still have 23, but the 6.5 Creedmoor fits into the Marlin, Remington, Ruger, and Savage short actions a little better than the 260 if you're using bullet heavier/longer than the 130 grain AB.

In a short action, I'd go with the Creed, in a long action my choice is the 256 Newton.

In a Mauser-length action my choice is the 6.5x55. The case capacity is actually very similar to the .256 Newton's, and you can buy Lapua brass.

I have 6.5x55 (x10), but like the "cool factor" of the 256 Newton. From a practical POV, the 6.5x55 is an easier choice in every way, but the Newton is just so classic! It is too bad that some writers, Terry Wieland, have put incorrect information about the Newton into print that, because it is in print, becomes generally accepted "fact".

I'm getting 3,000 fps with the 129 grain Hornady and 130 grain AB from my 25" Husqvarana in 256 Newton, about midway between the 2,900 fps from the 6.5x55 and the 3,100 from the 270 and 130 grain bullet combination.

This may sound strange but I love the 250ai round a very efficient design. When I saw the case on the creedmoor it's very similar , then all the positive reviews, especially the one Mule deer wrote on the Ruger M77 I thought why not. What a mild little cartridge that does a nice job. Plus it's one My wife can shoot. She has a .243, but the creedmoor has a bit more bullet wt. for big game.

My take is it is a marketing success more than the ideal cartidge, a concept us rifle snobs usually overlook.

The 6.5 Creedmoor has a good case design for shooting the heavier 6.5 bullets at short action magazine lengths, that is obvious. Brass quality is good enough. Supply seems to be good too. Where they really went right was marketing it as a long range cartridge, which meant affordable factory ammo with high ballistic coefficient bullets. They marketed it as a long range target cartridge from the start, and as a hunting cartridge after it became popular. Most others in its class happened the other way around.

I recently rebarreled a .260....to .260! But I thought long and hard about the Creedmoor, as it has some advantages, as Mule Deer has pointed out in this thread and explained to me at the time. But the final deciding factor was a fair amount of new .260 brass, and the fact that I already had dies for the .260.

There is a law of ecology that if two species occupy the exact same niche, one will win in the end, unless they learn to fill that niche somewhat differently. Think hawks and owls...same prey, but they hunt at different times. I think the two calibers are close enough that one will crowd the other out eventually. And since the Creedmoor is just as good (as near as I can tell) at shooting deer with plain bullets, but the Creedmoor can handle the VLDs better....I think it may be the ultimate winner.

For handloaders, does the 6.5x57 offer any practical advantages over the 6.5x55?

I've always wondered how a 6.5x57AI would perform?

The 6.5-284 is both 55mm long and an improvement, in terms of case capacity, of the smaller diameter 6.5x55 and 6.5x57, so that might be a place to start any performance comparison.

The 6.5 Creedmoor has had a much better initial launch than the 260 did. If you look back at the 260's initial launch in 1997, you have to wonder how Remington could have done such a poor job of it. I have always wondered if somebody at Remington purposely allowed, or even facilitated, the errors/missteps associated with the 260's launch. Among those missteps were:

Remington only offered one "standard" factory load, a slow 140 grain PCL. The 120 grain BT and 125 grain Partition were "premium" factory loads sold at a higher price. Where were the 100 and 120 grain factory loads?

Remington cut their early 260s with too slow a ROT for optimal accuracy with heavier bullets.

Remington never cataloged the 260 in either of its two most popular rifles styles, the 700 ADL and BDL.

I think that Remington's launch of the 260 would make for a great Harvard Business Review Case Study on how not to launch a new product.

LOL, good point! Call it the Dupont factor............
Dont get me wrong, I like it, I just also like my 260's. Probably like several others, I have a pile of brass, and I am not into shooting 140's in either, so I do actually prefer the 260, but the creedmoor, is very good and very accurate.

Throating a 260 to fit the box with 140's shouldn't be a problem if you're building. Then there is finding the brass...

I've probably loaded 6k 260 cartridges, better than 90% in necked up Norma and Winchester/Olin 243 brass.

Pete,

The 6.5x57 has just about the same powder capacity as the 6.5x55, but the 6.5x55 has several advantages. Some are slight (a little sharper shoulder and longer neck) but one is big: Easily available Lapua 6.5x55 brass, which also tends to be reasonably priced, at least for Lapua.

The big problem with the 6.5x55 these days is so many shooters are convinced that no "long-action" cartridge can be accurate. Which is why there are so many 6.5 cartridges designed to be crammed into a short-action magazine.

260Remguy,

I had my first .260 built in the late 1990's, and used necked-up Lapua .243 brass.

There were some positive sides to the .260 marketing. They had Jim Carmichel pushing the round, which counted for a lot back then. But the biggest problem was probably already-existing rounds--as it is for any general hunting round these days.

Why was the average hunter going to buy a cartridge halfway between the .243 and 7mm-08? Minor ballistic advantages? The quest for one all-around rifle?

The smaller 6.5's are fairly popular today because of laser rangefinders, which appeared in the 1990's but didn't start to change the way many hunters looked at downrange performance until a decade ago. Only then did high-BC 6.5 bullets, combined with modest recoil and fast twists, become the ideal for enough wannabe long-range hunters to create enough market for a commercial 6.5 specifically designed for the purpose.

Which is a big part of the reason the 6.5 Creedmoor became a niche success and the .260 didn't: In 2007 the market was ripe for something like the Creedmoor, and in 1997 it wasn't for the .260.

Another reason the .260 never really went anywhere is so many of its fans kept emphasizing how it was such a great all-around cartridge. They claimed that with a .260 you don't need a .243 or 7mm-08--or even a .25-06 or a .270.

This may be true to a certain extent, but so what? The concept of owning one all-around rifle went out with the Great Depression, and even then wasn't much among loonies who could afford more than one rifle. I've also noticed that most .260 fans own more than one.

In 1997 most hunters just didn't see any reason for the .260. If they were average hunters who didn't handload, the .243 Winchester, .25-06 Remington, .270 Winchester and 7mm-08 Remington already provided more options than they really needed anyway, and factory ammo in many useful variations was already widely available.

At the other extreme, rifle loonies who handloaded have always been notoriously fickle, running from one In-Cartridge to the next like women after this spring's fashions. Some probably did buy a .260, but without laser rangefinders, smart-phone ballistic apps, and dozens of high-BC bullets there really WASN'T any advantage in a small 6.5. Plus, even most rifle loonies didn't believe in shooting big game with "target" bullets back then. So no, the .260 didn't "fail" just because of marketing.

Most commercial centerfire cartridges that make it do so because there was ALREADY a market niche for them. This is exactly why the Weatherby cartridges became such successes, and the .22-250, .243, .25-06, 7mm Remington Magnum and both the .300 Winchester Magnum and .300 WSM became world-wide rounds. There was ALREADY plenty of demand for them, so they filled an existing desire and perceived need.

New commercial cartridges that "fail" (to whatever degree) usually don't fill an already existing demand. There wasn't any real demand for the .260 when it appeared, but there was for the 6.5 Creedmoor by the time it arrived.

I think big green should have marketed it as the 6.5-08 Remington and shown how it was already a well loved target round capable of crossing over into hunting.

Then slammed it in all of their offerings.

Mike

I never really thought of the 6.5x55mm as needing a long action..Most of the older European rifles I've seen I am sure I would class as intermediate length?

A few years back I had a Sako .380win re done as a .260Rem and I’ve been very pleased with it. It seems to offer a balanced all round performance that I find well suited for deer stalking over here..

In hindsight a Credmoor might have been a better choice (at least on paper), but I suspect the brass would be very difficult to get hold of here in the UK..

That's the exact reason I went 260. Course with a handle like "16 Bore" you'd probably expect it. I can afford more rifles, but damn if I can find the time to monkey with them. In my book it covers anything Id want up to about what a 270 offers. Then the 7mag takes over. 223,260,and 7Mag will do 10X more than I'll live long enough to do and enough of a spread to make things spicey.


Easy peasy.....

"260Remguy,

I had my first .260 built in the late 1990's, and used necked-up Lapua .243 brass.

There were some positive sides to the .260 marketing. They had Jim Carmichel pushing the round, which counted for a lot back then. But the biggest problem was probably already-existing rounds--as it is for any general hunting round these days.

Why was the average hunter going to buy a cartridge halfway between the .243 and 7mm-08? Minor ballistic advantages? The quest for one all-around rifle?"

John,

I believe that I may own your first 260, or at least I own one of your former 260s.

What you say is true, my point being that Remington didn't do enough to help the 260 succeed, regardless of the environment that it was being released into. The way that Remington handled the introduction of the 260 virtually guaranteed its failure before the first rifles hit dealers' shelves. When I ordered my first 260 in 10/97, none of the wholesalers that I buy from had any ammo or brass.

Remington's failure to provide a multi-purpose selection of "standard" priced factory ammo sure didn't help. If there had been faster 100 and 120 grain factory loads in lieu of, or in addition to, the 140 grain PCL, the round itself might have been more attractive. Also, Remington's failure to chamber the 260 in either of their most popular, highest sales volume, Model 700 styles, the ADL and BDL, could only hurt sales of the 260. AFAIK, except for some limited runs that they made for Grice and Custom Shop guns, Remington cataloged the 260 in the following 7 and 700 configurations:

Model Seven in a variety of barrel lengths and stock materials
700 BDL-SS-DM with a 24" barrel
700 LSS-MR (my favorite)
700 DM-MR
700 VLS
XP-100

That said, its not like Remington's marketing team has had more than its share of other fails. Dropping the Marlin X guns in favor of the 783 seems like a more recent fail. I still think that the 260's launch would make a great HBR case study for little MBAs to learn how not to launch a new product.

My initial interest in the 260 was sparked because I was looking for a stainless/synthetic 6.5mm rifle to replace the Winchester 70 FWTs in 6.5x55 and 6.5-284 that I was using to hunt deer. The Remington Seven stainless/synthetic met that want better than the longer and heavier 700 BDL/SS/DM.

Pete,

In America, for some reason, most shooters call any action longer than really "short," with a 2.8" magazine, a long action. I even suspect most shooters would be confused by the term "intermediate" action!

16bore,

Unfortunately for Remington and the .260, you're not typical!

260Remguy,

I could provide a long list of examples of marketing failures not just by Remington but by other rifle companies--along with many from other companies. "New Coke" comes to mind.

If you read many older gun magazines, you'll find many examples of writers complaining about how one of their favorites that didn't sell well was neglected, and didn't succeed because the company didn't provide the right ammo, or the right rifle. EVERY rifle loony has a favorite cartridge they think has been downtrodden by marketers.

But some new cartridges have succeeded even when the company made mistakes. The first 175-grain grain factory load for the 7mm Remington Magnum was a ROUND-NOSE Core-Lokt! And 7mm Magnum ammo of any kind was scarce in many areas for a while. Yet it went on to become perhaps the biggest success of ANY big game cartridge introduced since WWII.

Many of today's rifle loonies don't realize it, but the 7mm RM was the hottest seller of not just the 1960's but the 1970's (next to the .30-06, of course, and I am sure that in the 1960's more 7mm RM's were sold than .30-06's, at least in America). It made the .300 WSM's splash of a decade ago look tiny. But the demand was already there, despite Remington's mistakes in marketing and supply, thanks to a long-perceived need for a commercial 7mm magnum in an "affordable" factory rifle, not a Weatherby.

If you can explain exactly where the perceived need for the .260 was before 1997, I'd appreciate it. I am a real rifle loony, and had been doing quite a bit of gun writing since about 1990, and never really heard any rumblings of demand for a moderate 6.5 before Remington announced the .260. Jim Carmichel did publish a column on the new round, explaining it's sterling virtues, but as I recall only after the fact.

Sometimes I suspect many firearms companies rely too much on "help" from gun writers, and that may have been one of the problems with Remington, the .260 and Jim Carmichel. Certainly back in the day when there were relatively few writers and magazines, the approval of one or two writers was an enormous help. But by the late 1990's the power of any individual gun writer had been diluted by dozens of other hunting and shooting magazines.

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