Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters So what makes a cartridge exciting?

What makes a cartridge exciting? What cartridge makes you get up each day with sunshine flooding the room, just itching for another astonishing and stimulating adventure with it instead of waking up to a commonplace, unsurprising day with the .30-06?

P.S. I don't care a whit about your astonishing and suspenseful rifle nor its extrapolated 24 hour performance. I'm just asking about the brass bottle it fires.

Some imagined distinction from other cartridges, whether slight or otherwise, Jim. The same reason why guys chase new tail. Chasing new cartridges is far cheaper.

Purchasing the ammo from the hot sales chick

I don't know about exciting but for me it's more like "interesting".

If you've been subjected to 200000 articles about a cartridge that's been around 117 years and constantly compared to a kissing cousin - it's easy to become rather bored and look to something else, even if "something else" isn't materially better. It just needs to be different.

It's like hot rods - oh, you have a 69 Camaro with an LS swap? Wow - I got 4 cousins with the same damn thing and the dude down the street, he's got one - it's like belly buttons. Show me something new - doesn't have to be better but be different.

I have mentioned here before, and I still believe, the way a cartridge sounds when it's pronounced has more than anything else to do with it's popularity. For every popular cartridge out there, there will be one or more at least as good or arguably better that flopped or, at least, is significantly less popular just for the way the name rolls off the tongue.

Because it is 45 caliper, is a straight 2-7/8" long, holds around 103 grains of F blackpowder and sends a 540 grain self cast bullet out the end of the barrel. You don't see that everyday of the week......

Next cartridge will either be a 44-77BN or a 40-70 straight.

I tend to like the old classics (222, .250/3000, 257 Roberts, 6.5x55, 6.5x57, 7x57, 7x64, 30-06, 303B, 8x57, 35 Whelen, 9.3x62 etc.). I like mild efficient cartridges and am definately not a magnum fan. MOST of the new cartridges introduced over the past 20 years have been magnums of some sort or another and most have faded away.

However, the 6.5 Creedmoor interested me because I looked at it and thought what a great mild little deer hunting round. And after I read an article where it is basically a necked up improved .250 Savage I wanted one. Then I 'discovered' the 6.5x47 and again thought what a great little efficient deer cartridge and will probably rebarrel a Rem Model 7 this year.

I don't like cases like the .300 Blackout as that's a bit too mild, but non magnums pushing bullets about 2700 - 2800 fps seem to do it for me.

And if just limited to one it would be the .257 Roberts. I have owned five rifles in this cartridge and have two at the moment.

I am fond of the aesthetics and ballistics of the .44-77..and I don't have to go to Big Box to buy it. If there was such an award, it might be called, "The Martha Stewart Gracious Living Riflery Award".

The 30-06 is exciting

What makes a cartridge exciting is simple, when you simply can't buy any factory ammo for it. I cast my own paper patch slugs, cut my own patches , wads, sometimes form my own brass, load them with black powder. 40-70 BN, 40-90 SBN, 44-77SBN, 45-75-420 or45-80-500, 45-110-540, 50-2.5"and 50-3 1/4". All paper patch, all black powder rounds you can't buy but utilize your own skills to produce. Meat , targets whatever, you got it. That's exciting sure can't buy them at wallyworld or anywhere else. When you do it all that's exciting. MB

I've never heard this theory but it makes about as much sense as anything.
The 6.5 Creedmoor has two things going for it...first, "six point five." I mean, it's PRECISE - down to the decimal point, not like just a "six" or a "seven" or an "eight" millimeter. And if you pronounce the second half with just a hint of "Moor" (like Othello) versus "more", oh, Katie bar the door...
Yeah, I know we had the "six point five" Remington Magnum, but that was back when we were all metric bigots, so it failed. We're woke now...
However it happened, it was a marketing miracle (combined with a good cartridge too). But that one doesn't really excite me so much. In fact, I resisted the whole fad up until I had picked up about 300 rounds of Hornady 6.5CM brass at the range and figured (since i already had all the bullets and powder, and only needed dies), I'd check it out with a $274 TC Compass.
And can anyone even dare to suggest that a .275 Rigby is not much more exciting than a 7mm Mauser (which, of course, lacks any decimal points at all, whereas the .275 goes to THREE significant figures, and then ends with Harry Selby's favorite suffix).
And the .275 Rigby does excite me these days as I am in the final stages of building one in a very old school way - 1903 Springfield with Griffin & Howe side mount and Lyman 48.
But the one that is really exciting me these days is the .256 Newton. I have an FN Mauser in the works with nothing left to go but the bluing and stock finish. And all the other loading things I need to get going on this sweet, sweet round are already in place! Yes, I lie awake nights...
Ooops, I got to rambling and totally forgot the OP doesn't care anything about the rifles we're putting them in (even though, largely, that may be what makes the little brass bottles exciting).

So, all these excite me, and many are partly because of the rifles they fit:
.275 Rigby
.256 Newton
.358 Winchester
.35 Whelen Ackley Improved
.270 Winchester Short Magnum
.338-06
6 mm Remington (which for some strange reason, even though I don't yet own one, I find far more exciting than the .244 Remington, which defies my hypotheses above. Though the .244 Remington is clearly at least one thousandth more exciting than the .243 Winchester)
.22 Hornet
.257 Roberts
9.3 x 62 Mauser (it gets even more exciting if you use a comma instead of a dot! Try it out...9,3 x 62 Mauser...see? That's how Lapua headstamps mine, and it does, really, excite me.)
9.5 x 57 Mauser (yes, "nine point five", not "nine point three" - even rarer!)

Even these really, really, boring rounds excite me:
.30-06 Springfield
.308 Winchester
.270 Winchester
.30 WCF (which is, of course, much more exciting than the .30-30)

I read back over this post and conclude perhaps I am too easily excited. I might even be a little on the looney side. Maybe this didn't contribute much to the OP's quest, but it's all true. All of those, and more, excite me. A lot.

Cheers,
Rex

Yes, it IS!

22 LR

Ronnie

A cartridge is a cartridge. It’s what you do with it that makes it exciting or not.

Yep. That too.

I've always been happy with the 30-06. I use other stuff but its always my main squeeze. Now I just bought a .300 Win Mag because I got an incredible deal I couldn't pass up and I'm not sure what role I'll find for that beings I use my 30-06 so much

The 25/06 still does ir for me... I talked my uncle into it in 1970. The model 700 is now in my cabinet and still shoots bugholes, has been responsible for Bull moose, Bull Elk , wild sheep and goats...and a few deer.
Something about the .25

What makes a cartridge exciting...

For me it’s 308 WCF on the head stamp

Nickel plating makes it sexy . . .

Your imagination.