Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Howa 1500 Alpine / 6.5 Creedmoor

These have all the appearance of what might be a nice, lightweight hunting rifle especially with the Bansner stock.
Has anyone have experience with the 6.5 Creedmoor as a hunting cartridge ?
Hopefully it will be in my hands later next week.
Also there seems to be a good cross-section of hunting and target load info out there.

I have shot 4 deer this year with the 6.5 Creed in a RAR-Predator, all died promptly via 123 grain AMax or 129 grain SST through the lungs. The 6.5 Creed is an easy cartridge to reload for and, if you don't want to reload, the Hornady and Winchester/Olin factory ammo is excellent.

The local Scheel's has a Howa 1500 in 6.5 Creed, but I think that it has a camo pattern Hogue stock, not a lightweight package. I think that, based on the MSRP of $1,211, a person could buy the lowest priced Howa 1500 in 6.5 Creed and a McM stock in the style that he/she favors and still have $$ leftover from the $1,211. This is assuming that SAS has the base level 1500s in 6.5 Creed at his usual $330+/- Howa 1500 price.

Heck, you could even buy a Vanguard2 in 6.5 Creed and a McM stock for less than $1,211, but you probably wouldn't have any $$ left after those purchases and the V2 has a 24" barrel, not a lightweight mountain rifle.

I've been thinking about picking up an alpine for my next rifle. They seem like a solid value, but reviews are few and far between. I've read that the actions on the Alpines were shaved down to get rid of some of the standard Howa bulk. They are light and quick in the hand, my local store has a 6.5 CM that I've played with several times. Street price is right around $1k, you could buy a cheaper standard Howa, Cerakote it and drop it in the stock of your choice for a similar cost, but I don't think you'd come close to the Alpine's weight.

I picked up an Alpine in .308 as a gift. It turned out to be a nice rifle that shoots quite well. I ended up doing a few things like bedding it and shooting some Tubbs Final Finish through it to it to get it to shoot better. Only issue is it did not want to feed out of the larger mag. The spring is too weak I think. That stock is the best feeling rifle I've held. Not a lightweight like a Kimber MT, but a real solid rifle IME.

Interesting, did the rifle not shoot well before bedding? What kinds of groups are you getting? If I got one I would probably get a .308 for the sake of streamlining my loading bench. How was the recoil on the .308?

It shot ok, about 1" or a tic over or so with factory ammo but occasional flyers. I'm not sure any one thing made a difference. May have just been me... But I tend to do that stuff regardless. For a relatively light rifle, it is now quite accurate with Federal Gold Medal Match (all I tried in it) with the last couple groups .8x". My son also shot some Rem 150 Corelokts (? I think that's what they were) and they shot .5" for a couple groups.