Thank you all for the extremely generous welcoming!
I should do my very best to contribute to this forum to the best of my ability. Over the years that I have been reading what American writers have written and also what have been written on different forums on the Internet. I have learned a great deal from that but I have also come to understand that the way we hunt and how we reason differs a lot from hunters in different parts of the world, if we are to learn from each other we need to keep an open mind. If I in any way can contribute to that I will be very proud.
There are a lot of different aspects to how we in Sweden (and Scandinavia) choose the chambering of our guns. One thing that has become obvious is that we put less emphasis on speed then what you do in America, in my opinion there are several reasons for this but that should be a subject for another post.
I should comment a bit on the surveys and some recent trends.
First you need to understand that the subject of both surveys is our Swedish moose hunt. Annually we shoot about 100 000 mooses in Sweden and there�s about 300 000 registered hunters here. 6.5x55 is the least powerful cartridge that�s allowed for moose hunting as well as most other big game hunting (the exception being roedeer, the smallest and also most common deer in Sweden which can be taken with rounds as gentle as 222 rem). The average shooting distance is less than 100m (probably between 60-80m) and we normally hunt moose together in hunting parties where the elder and more experienced tend to influence the younger hunters a lot. So as a collective we are less prone to follow the newest trends even though there are obviously exceptions to this. Some of my older fellow hunters still consider the 308 win a novelty that has not yet proven itself
(even though it has been our service cartridge for more than 40 years).
Another thing to take into consideration is that it is more or less mandatory to practice on our running moose, which is shoot at 80m going 6m/s (or 18 fps). A lot of our hunting parties train together both as a social event and to make sure that everyone is up to par. In order to do that a lot of the training facilities require that you use FMJ as softpoints may fragment and damage the acoustic targets that are getting more common every year now. For this reason Norma has always marketed a budget line of ammunition with FMJ�s in the most common chambering in boxes of 50 cartridges. This has had a great impact on what chambering the new hunters chooses as well, the difference could easily be 2 $ per cartridge compared to ordinary hunting ammunition so if you shoot a couple of hundred shots during practice every year you will notice the difference.
Regarding the 6.5x55 and its recent drop in popularity there�s two main reasons for this, the first is legislation and our politicians. There has been legislation suggested that will ban all lead from hunting ammunition in Sweden (this includes rifle ammunition) in effect if that legislation was passed by parliament (at the moment it looks like that won�t happen) 6.5x55 will not be allowed for big game hunting due to the technical requirements. So there has been an insecurity regarding the future of 6.5x55 as a big game round.
The other reason is that the wild boars are getting more common every year and whereas 6.5x55 was judged as appropriate for mooses in most hunters view it lacks some power to effectively take a big boar (the kind that everyone dreams of both very few has actually seen). Instead we see a resurrection in chambering like 8x57, 9.3x62 and 9.3x74R.
When Swedish hunters wants to improve the power of their chambering they will look to upgrade in bullet weight and caliber but usually not in speed.
Usually we talk about two main powerlevels of big game cartridges here in Sweden, the first one are the normal big game cartridges such as 6.5x55, 308win and 30-06 which are considered by most experienced hunters as acceptable and the differences are more with the type of gun that you prefer then with the chambering itself. A lot of hunters nowadays want a more powerful rifle to complement to the former group. They will usually look as something like 358 Norma, the different 9.3�s or a 375 H&H but some will end up choosing something in between such as 8x57 or a 338 Win.
I have tried to keep this as objective as possible without trying to promote my own choices as I�m a rifle loony and not representative of the average hunter in any way.
A part from the discussion above hunting in Sweden is different in a lot ways. There�s almost no public land instead we lease hunting areas from the landowners, usually long time leases of at least five years. Most hunting in Sweden is conducting in hunting teams and we use dogs in a lot of different ways both before and after the shot. The meat hunters are in absolute majority and trophy hunters are not that common. There�s a lot of pressure not to wound any game that you don�t get and if you act irresponsible such as taking to big risks or shooting at game at ranges that you does not master you might find out that you are not welcome anymore.
Best Regards,
Henrik
