Antelope Sniper: Have you or someone you know used the Grendel? My experience (limited) with it has been good. Maybe I'm more attentive to bullet placement than I once was. A young lady in our family is going to buy her own rifle even though she is welcome use one of mine. The .270 recoiled more than she liked so she has been using my Weatherby Vanguard 2 in .223. She told me she had done some research and was thinking of getting a 6.5 Creed. I told her the Creed is a fine caliber but she might do just as well deer hunting with a Grendel and get even less recoil. She seems to be more than average averse to recoil. We don't hunt out west in barren country but the occasional 300+ yard shot does present itself.
Hastings,
I have not used the Grendel beyond shooting another guys rigs at the range a couple of times. One that I shot was really set up for cross purposes, what a 16" barrel and an Eotech sight
. So, I've never got to stretch the legs on one properly set up with good hand loads. Regardless, I've killed game far enough to know NAB still expand down around 1800 fps, and that's the regular AB's, not the LRAB's. Sure, you don't get the explosive devastation of a 3300 fps impact, but you also have a whole lot less blood shot meat. The LRAB's are advertised to expand into the 1200's, and i suspect even at those velocities, they would do just fine providing the shooter had the skill to keep them in the boiler room.
The primary medium rifle in our family, over 4 generations, is the .270 Winchester. I shoot 59gr H-4831 over a 140gr NBT/NAB, lit with a CCI-200, and back it off two grains for the wife and kids. That's in Winchester brass, if you use something heavier like Remington, you'll want to back that off a grain.
In this state the minimum for big game hunting is a 6mm bullet, and 85grains for Elk. I started my kids on AR's early, so to keep the same ergonomics etc, I wanted an AR hunting solution. For that I've build a pair of 6x45's, one with a 22" barrel the other with a 16. the 22" shoot great with the 90gr NBT, 10 shot groups just over an inch, but I have yet to scope the 16". They are both BHW barrels, so I imagine it will shoot just fine.
