Assuming a 26" barrel and moly 85-90gr bullets, what kind of speeds could a guy expect? I'd imagine barrel life to be short, but that's a given.
I'm asking because I find myself sitting on a 700 LA donor, a good laminated mag-sporter take-off handle, and a 4.5-14x40LR. Backing up and taking a good look at my hunting conditions, I find that I spend a lot of days each fall/winter looking over pastures and pipline ROW's where shots range out to 400yds or so. Only two of my eight stand locations offer shots at ranges longer than that and I have yet to see a good buck in those far reaches. When a buck comes out, I often have only a few seconds to size him up and shoot. I wait with my rifle in my hands. It can be tough to know if he is at 270yds or 320yds, and while I use an LRF when possible, judging from landmarks will only get you so close. Running a drop chart from JBM on a 90gr E-tip at 3650FPS gives a mid-range rise of 3.0", a 300yd zero, and is only 3.0" low at 350yds. That's pretty dang flat, even if the actual velocity is a bit lower than the number I plugged in. No, it doesn't offer great 600yd+ ballistics, nor does it cheat the wind really well, but it could be a point & shoot rifle at 99% of the game I'm likely to take.
In short, it looks like the newer bullet offerings could offer some fresh advatages to a fast 6mm, especially for shots inside of 400-450yds where impact velocity is still high. Around here, a 200lb whitetail is a big guy, so I'd imagine a stout .244 bullet to be plenty for clean kills. I know they work at closer ranges from the 243win.
Any thoughts? I know this is basically the 257wby concept, just downsized a bit. (.013" to be exact)
