You know I have been reading magazines on outdoors, rifles, shotguns, handguns, tactical this or that, Boys Life since about 1982 and in all that time I have never read an article that was negative about any rifle, shotgun or hand gun or anything new or trendy! Nothing worse then someone that worships at the altar of all things periodical spouting nonsense about "modern" and "technology" it is laughable. Nothing that has come down the road cartridge wise has any new technology in it. The cases, the bullets, and the primers are unchanged for well over 60 years. Sure powder has changed some but that is it. Anyone can take 100 year old technology and alloys and crank out a new design that is not new technology or modern anything!
This is what we have today thanks to gun writers and maybe public schools and universities! 1) People who can not think for themselves and decide what is pertinent and what is a distraction. 2) Short Actions are lighter and stiffer and more accurate so I should build a trendy whammy short magnum or short fat round on a short action! 3) I need to run the heaviest for caliber VLD's in everything from my plinking rifle, my hunting rifle and my F-Class rig.4) I can not feed my short super whammy trendy cartridge from the magazine of a short action unless I seat the super heavy VLD bullet into the case and eat into powder capacity! 5) How do I get 3999fps out of my 6.5 PRC from my R700 SA with 180gr 6.5mm Berger. 6) To fit in the magazine so you do not have single shot rifle that bullet is so far away from the rifling especially if you used some custom spec.'ed reamer to allow you to shoot loaded ammo with an OAL that will never fit in that magazine.
The above is almost all you hear on forums. That and people trying to figure out how to build a 338LM on an action that really was not meant to handle a cartridge that long because they did not do their home work. All of the above is so easy to see coming and not fall for.
Bartlein and Hawk Hill Custom make up 69% of the barrels on the top 100 shooters in PRS (
https://precisionrifleblog.com/2015/11/21/precision-rifle-barrels/).I know that is 2015 info but it was readily available. That said I can remember when Brux, Krieger,Hart, Lija, Shilien and Douglas where all at the top in one form of shooting or another.
Over the next 40 years I am sure I will see many more cartridges come and go but very few stick around or have any staying power. Their is very good reasons why the 30-06Spr, 25-06R, 270W, 300WM, 300 Whby Mag, 7RM, 22LR, 30-30, 45-70, 308 Win, 338WM, .243W, 7-08R, 6.5-06, 7Mauser, 8Mauser,6.5 Swede, 260R, 6BR, 6PPC, 6 Dasher, 22PPC,22-250, 458 Lott, 404 Jeffery, 375 H&H, 9.3x62 are still with us and popular. When Hornady stops making 6.5 Creedmore brass you can always switch to 260R. Oh and seldom is your fastest load your most accurate load which is another thing people always seem to forget about. Unless you are shooting at close range group size down range is always more important than almost anything else.
The 6 Creedmore and 6.5 Creedmore have little going for them in terms of hunting or target shooting. The 6PRC and 6.5PRC likewise other then being trendy better cartridges have come and gone then they will likely ever be. It is not that the cartridges can not be made to work so much as they can never live up to the hype being showered upon them combined with better options already existing. Hornady's brass is not inline with it's price in terms of number of reloads compared to things that cost a little more but give you 3x-5x the life expectancy. There are cartridges that will produce the same practical results with less powder and lower pressure. There are cartridges that give better barrel life. There are cartridges that give you more powder space and higher velocities. It can not do what 284 does in F-open, TR can not use it, PRS guys are favoring 6mm low recoiling rounds. Bench Rest is not interested. The newer cartridges in rural America can be hard to find and when you do find them you have limited selection of bullet weights and construction. We already have everything we will ever need to to hunt Elephants to Elk and P-Dogs and Pheasants in cartridges that have been with us since 1963 and prior. Hype is a double edge sword because when the real life results do not match it leave a sour taste. Worse than that though you get all kinds of of guys showing up on the internet praising it because if they admit they where suckered in by the hype and marketing they will look like fools. On top of that people that look to make a living selling you things are in the business of not being as honest as we would like because they have to keep you buying.
In many ways Tubbs 6XC 117gr. and 115gr. DTAC makes far more sense then the 6CM and 6.5CM from a target shooting perspective but he never had any real backing or support and no deep pockets like Hornady, NORMA and Lapua. Likewise the popularity of the 338LM is silly for any American when you look at the 338RUM, 338Edge, and look at of an action to build a proper 338LM with out modification to an action never meant to handle a cartridge that long. Any penny's you save modifying an action is lost to machine time unless you do it your self.On top of that the cheaper options have not proven to be very accurate in many cases.
In my lifetime I have not seen anything too amazing in rifle cartridges because it always comes down to barrel life vs powder burnt vs trajectory vs cost for special proprietary brass vs weight of action vs weight of barrel and what it can do for you in real life. Some people do not mind spending 5X as much in the long run to gain 100fps but that is foolish when you look at real world results. You never get 5X the accuracy or consistency. The margin of return starts to drop off fast.
In the next 10-15 years we will see a lot of changes because all the Baby Boomers with the deep pockets and the time to actually perfect their skills with lots of range time or a range in their back yard will start dying off at an accelerated rate. I think we will see things go in a different direction. Not sure yet which direction things will go or if it will be good or bad. We do not have as many Doctors, Lawyers, Engineers, Machinist in the population as we once had and fewer youth are getting into hunting or shooting sports. It will be interesting for sure and I am thinking chaos!
