Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire 260 Rem vs 6.5 Creedmoor

Grendel is a good round, shot thousands of rounds from a 7BR and 6BR....6.5BR would best the G by 100-150 but must handload.

If you like the 85-90s, a 6BR would suit you just perfect. Dropped deer at 400 yds using a 105 amax, but the 95 NBT flattened a few also, at half the range, as that was my presentation. A 6 shooting same powder capacity and bullet weights above, will do better at long range. No doubt a Grendel is good out to around 300 yds day in and out, with good bullets and placement.

The Creed........well they just add distance if/when the need arises.

Like the Swede, No flies on a 260 loaded with ammo that gives great accuracy, and feeds thru a mag for a hunting rifle. Creed makes it an easy pick for most applications for a modest 6.5mm.

Given your screen name, you probably don't need a 6.5 Creedmoor. The 257 Roberts will do everything except maybe extreme range target shooting.

I have a 6.5 Creedmoor and I like it. I was looking for a 260 but wanted a Browning instead of a Remington and could not find an Xbolt in 260. They are interchangeable in my opinion.

Most of us have way more rifles than we need. My first centerfire rifle was a Remington 700 in 30-06. I now have about 10 centerfire rifles. I could sell everything but my original 30-06 and could still hunt everything that I do now without any problems. Sometimes rifle buying is about fun more than need.

I been rich and I been poor and I been rich and I been poor.... and rich is better. - an old retired black boxer


I have rifles in 260 Rem and I have rifles in 6.5x55 Swede and I have rifles in 6.5-06...... and 6.5-06 is better. - an old retired white engineer

recoiljunky,

"Your paragraph [[in [post 13985833] states the other rifles you've taken antelope with that probably did as good a job as the 6.5 Creedmoor, but saying that you took a "big game animal" with it does not make it any better at the job than your 22-250."

I have no idea what your point is here. Is it that I've claimed the 6.5 Creedmoor does a better job of killing big game than any other cartridge? I can't remember ever stating that. In fact in every one of these threads I've often made it plain that the 6.5 Creedmoor doe NOT kill big game better than any other cartridge, and especially not the other 6.5's with the same basic ballistics, such as the .260 and 6.5x55.

The 6.5 Creedmoor's virtues as a hunting cartridge are exactly what I started in other posts, and have stated many other times in print:

1) It provides superb accuracy with inexpensive factory ammo in inexpensive rifles.

2) The cartridge kicks lightly enough for even hunters who MIGHT be recoil-sensitive to practice sufficiently to shoot accurately in the field, and bullet placement is far more important than any other factor in killing power.

3) It does this with bullets that have sufficiently high ballistic coefficients to catch up to bullets from harder-kicking cartridges in the same caliber-class within 300 yards or so, though of the bullets also work close up, as have from moderate velocity 6.5mm rounds for a long time.

4) It does this without the need to handload, or buy ammo that costs 2-3 times as much, or "build" a custom rifle.

All of these reasons are exactly why the 6.5 Creedmoor has become so popular here in Montana, particularly as a cartridge for kids and wives and girlfriends, where it's largely taken over the former role of the .243 Winchester. But quite a few he-men have also bought one too, after they see how well it works as a general big game round. The same reasons are the 6.5 Creedmoor is popular not just in Montana but many other states, including Europe and Africa.

Many of those guys have not ever become acquainted with the .260 or 6.5x55, or they would have known how well such rounds work for hunting big game. But they didn't try them, because Remington screwed up the .260's introduction from the get-go, and the 6.5x55 has been around so long there are wide variations in not only rifle chamber-throats but factory ammo--when you can find factory ammo that isn't downloaded 300 fps below 6.5 Creedmoor and .260 velocities.

Many Campfire people keep posting that they're NOT buying one, because their (pick one) .257 Roberts, .257 Weatherby, .270 Winchester, 7mm-08 etc. etc. etc. does the same things. Yeah, those cartridges will kill game just as well, but do not have the list of other 6.5 Creedmoort attributes: affordable, accurate and easily available rifles and factory ammo.

Apparently, rifle loonies simply cannot understand those simple concepts, because long ago they decided on a cartridge that was "perfect." Well, sure, especially if you're a handloader, or "custom" rifle nut. But apparently some of those cartridges and rifles do not appeal to a LOT of other hunters and shooters, for the reasons I stated. Otherwise the .257 Roberts, .257 Weatherby, .270 Winchester, 7mm-08 etc. etc. etc., would be selling like the 6.5 Creedmoor has for the past decade.

I bought one because Whitakers ran a Howa 6.5 CM on sale for less than $300. Was floored by how accurate it was, and that was with just about every bullet and load I tried. A local kid found out I had it and begged me to sell it to him. I priced it up there pretty good, and he bought it. So, I bought one of those junky Remington 700's in 6.5 CM, and I'll be damned if it didn't shoot just as well as the Howa did.

I've got someone wanting to buy it, and if they do, I'll buy another one, probably a 700 Mountain rifle, in the Creed. It's a perfect deer cartridge as far as I'm concerned.........high on performance, low on recoil. What's there not to like?

I'm sure a 260 would work too, and I know a Swede would, because over the years I've had several 6.5X55's. I've actually killed more stuff with the Swede than with the Creedmoor, but SA versus LA is a no brainer for me.

It's not the be all, end all, of cartridges, but in it's class it's a pretty dang good one.

I have 13 of them, probably skewing the average a little, but I'm not close to being EVERYONE.

I had more than 20 perfectly good 260s when I bought my first 6.5 Creedmoor and have written multiple times that for the guy who loads his own ammo and doesn't need to shoot bullets longer than the 130 grain AB, the 260 will do any thing that the 6.5 Creedmoor can do within those parameters.

There are at least 3 things that the 6.5 Creedmoor does better than the 260:

1. Many new rifles are being chambered in 6.5 Creedmoor, but there are currently very few new rifles being chambered in 260.
2. Many more factory ammo options in 6.5 Creedmoor than in 260.
3. If you need to shoot bullets longer/heavier than the 130 grain AB, the 6.5 Creedmoor has an advantage in COAL and accurate factory ammo can found in many places and at a reasonable price loaded with bullets in the 125 to 143 range. Options for every user, except maybe varmint shooters.

Wal-Mart sells 6.5 Creedmoor ammo, but I have yet to see a rifle chambered in 6.5 Creedmoor in their racks. If Wal-Mart was selling Remington 700 ADL package guns in 6.5 Creedmoor for under $400, I think that they'd sell enough to make a noticeable impact on the profits at Remington, Wal-Mart, and the ammunition manufacturers.

I want one.

All I know is I wanted an 84M Kimber in .260 Remington. The one they built wa notoriusly inaccurate. They dropped it.

When they started making Kimbers in 6.5 Creedmoor I figured it was close enough so I bought one. Very accurate and popular so ammo and components are relatively inexpensive.

I have a 6,5x55 (An 1894-nice little carbine.) and if I had one chambered in ia modern action I could come close enough with it or the .260 that It would match the Creedmoor.

What I couldn't match is the low price availability of rifles, brass, bullets, load info and factory ammo.

NTG,



Perhaps this will puzzle some Campfire members, but I have never found any of the five 6.5 Creedmoors to have enough merit to move my .270 or 7mm-8 down the road (or my .260, custom 6.5x55, .257 Roberts, 7x57, etc.) In fact the only rifles I've moved down the road after buying one of the five 6.5 Creedmoors I've owned was the PREVIOUS 6.5 Creedmoor--because I'd found out what I needed to from it, and now wanted to see if yet another 6.5 Creedmoor will shoot as well as the previous rifles.

Right now my 6.5 Creedmoor is a Bergara B-14 Ridge, which shoots very well, as 6.5 Creedmoors normally do. But my tentative plans for hunting this fall include such possibilities as my semi-custom 7mm-08, a Ruger 77 tanger, the lightweight model that came from the factory with a spindly 18" barrel. But it also had a slimmer, nicer stock than the standard 77, with a black forend tip., and #1 contour, 22-inch Douglas barrel turned it into a very accurate rifle that weighs 7-1/2 pounds with scope.

Probably am also going to find a use for the .257 Roberts I'm building on an FN Mauser action, but with a synthetic stock to keep it light. We already have two other .257's in the house, but....

I have one,

Just enough to be "cool"..



DF

No creedmoors here too much work to get them to shoot.

If you want some good load data for that -08, let me know.





P

When Hornady and Ruger "made" the 6.5 Creedmoor on a chassis rifle FIRST it was to sell to the new and up and coming long range steel bangers not as a hunting rifle (you forgot that part). Now there are a plethora of would be snipers that take their chassis rifle out and "hunt" with them when they have no business doing so. Why? Because they read that if they have xxxx scope on xxxx rifle they can kill elk at xxxx yards A N D their smart phone says so.



Next time I talk to my friends at Shedhorn Sports in Ennis I'll have to ask them what their sell ratio is, 6.5 Creedmoor to the rest, and see what they say.

I've heard the 308 is still outselling the 6.5 for the same reasons as you stated the 6.5 is running rampant. When I was in Shedhorn in May I purused the ammo aisle knowing Rob keeps an ample supply of just about everything and saw probably twice as much different 308 ammo as any other except .223/5.56. In the local Walmart it's the same, which is still where (guessing) over 50% of American hunters buy ammo. There or some other discount place like Piggly Wiggly or Murdoch's.




In Bozeman where cowboy boots and Copenhagen have been replaced by skis, flip flops and bongs I can see that. Back before there was a Bob Ward's, when The Beaver Pond was THE sporting goods store in the Gallatin Valley and Owenhouse Ace Hardware still sold International farm equipment AND vehicles, that's the Bozeman Montana I grew up knowing. I'd bet there's not that many 6.5 Creedmoors sold at Bob Ward's.

Speaking of Bob Ward's, were you ever in his first store in Missoula? Musta only been 16 feet wide but a block long. On Higgin's Ave. I think? I was maybe ten when they moved (to the Tremper shopping center I believe).

I'd hafta ask my sister, she's the smart one.

I bought my 6.5 CM in the 2008-09 winter time frame and it is a Ruger 77 Stainless All-Weather hunting rifle. It was the first 6.5 CM rifle I had seen in a market area that has the newest items very quickly. This pic is the Ruger 77 Hawkeye which followed the original 77 Stainless All Weather, but they are pretty much identical in appearance. That was long before I ever saw a Ruger chassis rifle in 6.5 CM on a shelf.

That rifle with the ugly old black stock would be perfect.

Fake News!

Thank you BayouRover for pointing out my mistake. In my area, the first one I saw was on the RPR chassis and the droopy drawers crowd was in Murdoch's trying to decide on weed or ammo.

My sister says I've been out in the timber too long.

Oh, also my bad, the first Bob Ward's was on 3rd Street, then it was moved to Higgin's Ave. then to Southgate Mall not Tremper Shopping Center.

recoiljunky,

Would not be surprised if the .308 outsells the 6.5 Creedmoor in some parts of the West, both in rifles and ammo. But in the Helena area (where I do most of my sporting goods shopping) the stores that stock a lot of ammo seem to have at least as much 6.5 Creedmoor ammo as .308. I'll have to take a closer look next time I go into one.

Was in Sportsman's Warehouse in Helena a couple weeks ago, and they have the best ammo selection in town. They had two 4-foot long shelves of 6.5 Creedmoor ammo, maybe 10 boxes of .260, and NO 6.5x55. Our local ranch-supply store in Townsend also has a bunch of 6.5 Creedmoor ammo, that disappears off the shelves pretty quickly, perhaps because of the local 1000-yard rifle range, though several of my buddies in town have 'em for hunting. (Others are anti-Creedmoorites, usually also anti-synthetic stocks.)

Yes, I do remember the first Bob Ward's in Missoula. In fact I used to buy fired shotgun shells there, because I was so young and poor that I still handloaded most of my shotshell ammo. They'd have barrels full from the local ranges. But sometime in there they moved to the bigger store.

Also remember the first Bob Ward's in Bozeman--along with, of course, the Beaver Pond. My father bought my first really good centerfire hunting rifle, a Savage 99 .308, at the Beaver Pond in 1966, after I'd used his .30-30 to take my first deer. He said I could pick out any rifle up to $50 (which shows you how inflation changes things!). I picked out the 99--which was marked $55, but he said that close enough.

The Bob Ward's in Helena probably the last on my list for shooting/reloading stuff of the four major stores in town, because it has the highest prices and worst selection. They also don't deal in used guns. The new Bob Ward's in Bozeman is a lot better. Don't get to Bozeman more than 2-3 times a year, but did buy some stuff at the BW's there about a month ago, stuff the Helena store doesn't have.

All it takes is desire. Welcome to the tribe!

Mule Deer, if you happen to get to Ennis, stop in at Shedhorn and browse around. Rob is an old friend ( we were EMT's together) and the "kid" Tucker , he's great to deal with. TONS of used guns.

The thing that burns my burgers about the 6.5 Creedmoor is/was all the hype and how (like I said before) with this, that and the other thing, you too can shoot like Chris Kyle. I'm not disparaging the cartridge, just what it's come to "represent" (?) Like when the 300 WBY came out, there were dudes (not like Hey Dude, but you know, dudes) that said that it would kill an elk even if you hit him in the FOOT. Not sure where they heard that, but you see my point.