Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles All these new cartridges - Normal?

I got into deer hunting about 2007 and joined this forum in 2010, so my rifle experience is a good bit shorter than many on here.

So my question. Is all the new cartridges coming out a normal thing? It seems like they're everywhere. The new Noslers, 6.8 Western, PRCs, etc. Throughout rifle history, have this many new cartridges come along every few years and then just died out? Or is this a relatively new trend?

There have been more, seems like in the 60’s or 70’s one or two new cartridges would come out maybe in one or two years.

You need new cartridges to sell more new guns and ammo. Also, there are new shooters who are not necessarily hunters, they shoot PRC and other events and are always looking for the latest new cartridge and use lots of ammo, unlike most hunters who buy a box and use it over multiple seasons. Good for the industry I suppose.

I don't think it's entirely abnormal. Look at all of the cartridges in Ackley's books. Granted lots of them are wildcats, but as long as we peer over a buttstock, our brains are going to try and think of something that'll do just a little bit better than what we already have.

Yeah, I think more get commercialized now than we saw from from 1950-2000-ish, but there have always been a lot of cartridges coming in, some stick around and some fade off. Look back through old loading manuals or catalogs and you can find a lot of cartridges that you don't see regularly anymore.

The late 18th and early 19th century had a TON of commercially produced cartridges that basically went extinct by the time WW2 rolled around.

The early 2000s were a busy time for new cartridge rollouts with all the WSM, WSSM and SAUM cartridges.

It’s not a new trend, but it tends to follow other technological developments.

After WWI, a lot of Americans picked up bolt-action rifles instead of their old lever-actions. As people realized that scopes could increase range, manufacturers brought out higher-velocity cartridges suited to bolt actions to maximize reach. Most shooters had trouble hitting a deer at 150 yards with open sights, but suddenly 300-400 yards was within reach for a good shot. Bullet technology was cup-and-core and the Greenhill formula dictated twist rates, so recoil was a factor with those cartridges because it increases faster than velocity. At some point you got so much velocity that the rifle kicked too hard for most folks to shoot well.

You started hunting about halfway through the wars in the Middle East. In that time, we learned a LOT about getting hits with a rifle at much longer ranges. We've seen wide adoption of cheap, accurate chronographs, so now we know exactly how fast bullets are going. We have cheap, accurate rangefinders so we know the exact distance to our targets. We know a lot more about ballistic coefficient and smart phones can host apps that crunch numbers and let us determine drops very accurately. And finally, we have scopes that let us dial for elevation.

The end result is that velocity is much less important in getting long-range hits but wind drift remains an issue. Heavy bullets with high ballistic coefficients are the best way to deal with that. Per Greenhill, they need faster twists than were standard before. A lot of today’s new cartridges duplicate the performance of older cartridges, but the rifles that fire them have faster twist rates to accommodate heavier bullets, which makes it impractical to rechamber older barrels for them. Seasoned shooters can now reach out to 1,000 yards or more with ease, and they can do it with light-kicking cartridges like the 6.5 Creedmoor.

With all of that said, most shooters still have trouble hitting a deer at 150 yards with open sights, and 300-400 yards is still a very smart practical limit for most people.


Okie John

And very little has come from all that activity.

Yep. And it keeps the Marketing and R&D teams busy.


Okie John

The advent of smokeless powder made for a busy time. Some cartridges went smokeless. Others passed from common use.
The .32 Winchester Special was designed for black powder use after the .30 Winchester went to smokeless powder. And it was popular in some areas.

And the various .32 and .38 revolver cartridges from Colt/S&W? An old woman asking for a box of .38s can give a gun counter guy the heebie jeebies.

"What kind of .38s ma'am"?
".38 Winchester, you dummy"...

But I'm sure there was some form of logic behind all of that?

And 130 years later some are still curious about what a different conformation of brass case can achieve
A few results are interesting...

And far be it from popular gun writers to stir the pot. Swedish Mausers lived in wooden barrels at the back wall of gun shops for most of my lifetime...

Edit; Stirring that pot really got some things cooking

Remember, "No 6.5mm cartridge will ever make it in the U.S."?

I got into an exchange like that once. Guy walked into the shop where I worked and said, "Gimme a box of 7.62 ammo."

"What kind? We've got 7.62x39, 7.62x51, 7.62x54R, and I think a couple of others."

Blank stare. Then he said, "You need to learn your guns" and walked out of the store.

I don't know whether he ever got the ammo he needed.


Okie John

Popularity of different rifle types changed a lot of outlooks, too. Didn't see too many AR style rifles at the range in 1990.

Retirements and lay-offs from Rock Island Arsenal put many ideas and egos into the private marketplace. It started a wave...

To be fair, I have to counter that with the time I was in Gander Mountain and a buy wanted 8mm ammo. The counter jockey offered him 8mm Remington Magnum. The customer said it looked a lot bigger than what he’d been shooting 😳.

I would think that if the R&D, case design, CNC, and labor costs outweighed the profits from:

-New gun sales
-Ammo sales
-Press from magazine articles and hunting shows

They wouldn’t keep coming out with new cartridges. However, they keep rolling out so money must be rolling in.

I'll be very curious to see how the Nosler cartridges last. It obviously helps that they make rifles and ammo, so they can keep them going as long as they want, but man, at the peak of empty shelves, all that stuff was still sitting there.

6.5 creedmoor is never going away at this point. PRC and RPM seem more iffy due to availability? The little PRC ammo that I've seen for dale is VERY expensive.

Buy a 308, 270 Win, or 30-06 and you can ignore the rest.

There isn’t much improvement over any of these 3 when it comes to deer hunting at reasonable ranges. The rest are simply for something different to play with.

I just got a PRC. Grabbed two boxes of 143 ELD for brass as 42 a box. While it’s not much different in my world than a 270 or 280 I didn’t think ammo was badly priced for premium ammo. And it was certainly pretty accurate.

Nosler is growing to some extent. At least the 26 and 28. With them getting picked up in other rifles and ammo they aren’t doing to too badly in my grid square.

I’d agree with that but add a 7 Rem, 300 Win and 338 Win.

But I love to try stuff out. Kinda fun to monkey with new stuff. For the guy that just wants one or two rifles a 270 and 30-06 are pretty danged tough to whoop for hunting.

this is good advise