Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters is there a winner between the 6.5-300 and 26 Nosler?

Many members of the "older generation" will stick to what they know works--though a lot of them saw many changes in what worked when they were younger.

One aspect has become apparent to me while working with a lot of different cartridges/bullets/scopes over the past several decades: One reason the older generation is obsessed with muzzle velocity and a flat trajectory (or at least an initially flat trajectory) is those are exactly what hunters have been obsessed with during the history of rifles, especially after the introduction of practical smokeless rifle powders in the 1880's.

Muzzle velocity made the most difference in trajectory over typical hunting ranges, with ballistic coefficient definitely being secondary. Since range-estimation was iffy, especially "eyeballing," an initially flat trajectory helped over what most hunters considered "normal" ranges. Using a scope's reticle for ranging worked far better, but still became unreliable beyond about 500 yards, because bullets started dropping so quickly. Thus the obsession with muzzle velocity: It was the most realistic and effective way to reduce the effects of ranging errors.

The muzzle velocity obsession, however, results in a skewed vision of newer cartridges/bullets/scopes. The biggest mistake is still obsessing over muzzle velocity, when bullets with higher ballistic coefficients make it less relevant.

In fact, laser rangefinders and dialing scopes (or even good long-range reticles, if you can't stand the thought of a dialing scope) make a few inches of extra bullet "drop" irrelevant. Second, high BC doesn't just reduce wind-drift--it also reduces the difference in a bullet's velocity over several hundred yards, which also reduces the differences in bullet expansion at closer and longer ranges, one of the primary reasons "controlled expansion" bullets started appearing in the first place.

Controlled-expansion bullets were partly designed to withstand hitting a big-game animal at close range with a high-velocity cartridge. In fact, that's exactly why John Nosler came up with the Partition. He really liked the flat trajectory of the .300 H&H, but even one of the supposedly toughest bullets of the day came apart on a moose shoulder. So he invented a better moose-trap, and eventually so did several other hunters.

However, none of the controlled-expansion bullets designed through the 1980's had very high ballistic coefficients. In fact, many spitzers were handicapped by flat meplats, the very tip of the bullet.

Flat meplats were common because so many hunters shot controlled-expansion bullets from "magnum" cartridges, which tend to recoil more, so batter the tips of soft-point bullets against the front of the magazine. This flattening annoyed many hunters, so several companies produced bullets with pre-flattened tips. This reduced the BC, resulting in even more obsession with muzzle velocity to compensate for suck BC's.

But with high-BC bullets there's no real need to start them at super-high velocity, because they retain far more velocity than older controlled-expansion bullets. Thus they can be started at 2800 fps or so and still work well on close-range game, even the "cup-and-core" high BC bullets--and because they retain far more velocity at longer ranges, they'll still expand way out there.

However, when many older hunters hear "long range bullet" they automatically assume the need for high velocity, because they're used to the poor BC's of many older controlled-expanding bullets. While some of today's controlled-expanding bullets have higher BC's, very few of the tougher ones have really high BC's. If somebody still really feels the need for muzzle velocities much above 3000 fps, they can use one of these compromise bullets, whether a Barnes LRX, Nosler AccuBond of Swift Scirocco II. They'll retain more velocity than a typical Nosler Partition, though some Partitions have decent BC's (as long as the soft tip isn't flattened during recoil) and a LOT more velocity than a Bitterroot Bonded Core, Norma Oryx, Swift A-Frame or other pre-tip-flattened bullet. Yet they still hold together on big game, especially if not started too fast. And there's no need to start them super-fast, since they retain more velocity at longer ranges.

Most really high-BC hunting bullets aren't designed to hold up at high velocities on close-range big game, for a simple reason: They're designed for shooting at longer ranges, where velocity has fallen off. In fact, when Nosler started working on a long-range hunting bullet, they'd didn't plan to bond the core.

But even many so-called long-range hunters demanded a bonded bullet, because even among them many believe bonding is somehow magic. So Nosler complied, producing the AccuBond Long Range, a longer, more streamlined version of the standard AccuBond. However, to insure expansion way out there, they had to use a somewhat thinner jacket. This resulted in a bullet that at close range, when started at the high velocity so many hunters think necessary, retains less weight and expands wider than the standard AccuBonds, reducing penetration.

A good example is a young Alaskan hunter I know. He used an ABLR for moose hunting last fall in his .300 Winchester Magnum, and of course handloaded it to high muzzle velocity. He did this despite not planning to shoot much beyond 400 yards, because he never does. Now, the ABLR killed a bull neatly at 200 yards, but the young man then complained that it lost too much weight.

Which is exactly what will happen with some of the "traditional" hunters now planning to use ABLR's, or other long-range bullets, at traditional ranges. They'll start them as fast as possible, because that's what "long range" has always meant to them, and when they end up shooting an animal at 100-300 yards, they'll complain that the bullet ruined too much meat, or didn't retain enough weight--unlike the Barnes TSX's, Nosler Partitions or Swift A-Frames they've used in the past.

In fact, a lot of these traditional hunters can't believe the 6.5 Creedmoor will kill as well as the .270 Winchester, because it can't reach the same muzzle velocities with the same bullet weights. (I also know that a lot of traditional hunters rate a cartridge's "killing power" by how much it recoils, and while the .270 Winchester doesn't kick hard, it kicks noticeably more than the same rifle in 6.5 Creedmoor.)

For those guys, here's a typical example of what's often called "real life." Last fall one my elk-hunting companions used a 6.5 Creedmoor with 140-grain Nosler AccuBonds. He's a young guy, and used a rifle many traditional hunters would hate--plastic-stocked, with a dialing scope and a suppressor. The muzzle velocity of his load was around 2750 fps, pretty pitiful by .270 standards. Yet he somehow managed to kill a mature 6x6 bull, and not out at 500 yards but at 40, in timber. Even at such a pitiful muzzle velocity, the AccuBond exited, and the bull went less than 50 yards before keeling over.

However, if he'd "had" to shoot at 500 yards, out where many traditional hunters feel 3000 fps is supposedly necessary, the 140 AccuBond from his pitful 6.5 Creedmoor would have been traveling only 100 fps less than a 140 AccuBond started at 3000 fps from a .270 Winchester. That's how quickly even medium-BC bullet like a standard 6.5mm AccuBond starts to catch up with a .270 Accubond started 250 fps faster at the muzzle. (The BC's used to calculate these numbers, by the way, came from Bryan Litz's tests.)

I realize the obsession with muzzle velocity isn't going away, because it's what most open-country hunters have been obsessed with for over a century. I should also state that I'm not anti-.270 Winchester, owning and hunting with a walnut-stocked, lightweight Model 70 with a non-dialing 6x scope. But I also own and hunt with a plastic-stocked, detachable magazine, push-feed 6.5 Creedmoor equipped with a dialing scope--also a 6x. As a result, I actually know how each performs in the field, instead of guessing based totally on muzzle velocity.