I was in a Quebec caribou camp with Layne Simpson several years ago and he was STILL seriously pissed about a misfire on a truly wonderful whitetail the year before.
If I remember correctly, somebody (maybe Remington or Norma) made .308 brass with a small primer pocket and he was getting stellar accuracy with the brass.
THEN, he was hunting whitetail deer one very cold morning and he experienced the worst thing possible for a handloader ... a total misfire ... CLICK!!!
And, of course, the buck ran away, never again to be seen by human eyes.
At a later date, Layne froze some ammo and experienced the same thing at the rifle range. Something about small primers, relatively large cases, freezing temps and dammit misfires.
Frankly, Layne is a very decent handloader, truly an astute hunter and I suspect he was onto something.
Because of this, I would not personally trust a small primer to ignite a 6.5 Creed in a hunting load ... period.
Just my thoughts and thoughts not requested by a living soul.
kd
I'm often wrong, but I don't see how the size of the primer would make a difference here. If the primer fired (not a click) but didn't ignite the powder, sure, I could blame the primer...but when it didn't pop at all?
I do know that many lubricants can become very viscous at low temperatures and could retard the firing pin's fall enough to cause a failure to fire. I know of just such a circumstance that happened last year-- some lube or combination of lubes inside of the bolt congealed in the freezing temps and the rifle went "click" instead of "bang". In the heat of the day, the rifle worked fine. The hunter and guide flushed the bolt with gasoline and successfully completed the hunt. Upon the hunter's return, he was able to replicate the malfunction in the freezer using the lubricant in-question.
I haven't tried the Lapua 6.5 CM brass as yet but will soon. I have never experienced ignition issues with any 6.5x47 but I've not used them in extreme cold.
