I was late to the .243 party. I wanted one pretty badly (6mm Remington, really), but always ended up with something else for one reason or another. I finally picked up a nice older Sako about four years ago and killed a deer with it, but that went when I invited my sons over one day to pick something out from my small pile, along with my pre-64 .270. I quickly replaced it with a leftover Hawkeye All Weather that had a great trigger, but some issues with the floppy stock. I was going to do something about that, but then Whittakers came up with a run of fast-twist Number 1Vs at a killer price, so one of those was put on layaway and the Hawkeye sold at a bearable loss. I shot the No.1 last week and it looks like a winner, but it's pretty heavy for walking around, so I'm thinking of getting a lighter rifle for woods walking. I'm sitting on a pile of 6mm bullets picked up from SPS and on sale elsewhere, probably more than enough to toast the barrel of the No.1.
Along comes the 6mm Creedmoor, with its nice case design and standard fast-twist barrels, but almost no selection of rifles. It runs neck and neck with the .243 velocity-wise, but has the same advantages the 6.5 has over the .260. I suspect it might also have somewhat better barrel life than a .243, and am almost positive that it won't need trimming nearly as often. My dilemma is, should I pick up an American Predator 6mm CM (and suppress my gag impulse a bit), buy a nice light .243 like the close-out Marlins and not sweat the barrel twist since most good hunting bullets work well in a 1-10 or 1-9, or wait and hope for a more seemly CM to come to market? I don't really want to go through the painful and expensive build process.
Thoughts?
