Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters So JB, why does the 6.5 CM get more attention than the 7mm-08?

I think people are referring to the fragility of their physical build, not their tenacity for life.

LastLemming,

In my experience "similar sized North American or even African Plains game" are not different or tougher. Have killed a bunch of both, and been beside hunting partners who killed quite a few too.

This is not just my opinion. The late Finn Aagaard, an experienced African hunter from his youth and then as a PH for a number of years, wrote that blue wildebeest (basically elk-sized, and considered by many the toughest to kill plains game animal) shot through the lungs with bullets from 6.5mm to .375 in caliber went about the same distance before falling, as long as the bullet penetrated and expanded sufficiently. (Most of Finn's early experience took place when cup-and-core bullets predominated, so the 6.5s tended to use bullets around 160 grains, but many of today's 6.5 bullets weighing much less will penetrate even deeper.)

Can give plenty of specific examples backing up Finn, involving modest-velocity cartridges less than .30 caliber, that I've witnessed on both African and North American big game. But my main point is that many hunters' opinion of "killing power" is based on what they believe a certain caliber and bullet would "should" do, rather than actual results.

One example came from the late Allen Day, who started going on guided hunts for "trophy" big game relatively late in his too-short life. He once posted that he'd killed "almost 10 bull elk," all with either the .30-06 (which he started with) or the .300 Winchester Magnum. He said all the bulls shot with the .30-06 traveled at least 100 yards before falling, while the .300-shot elk never went more than 50 yards.

Aside from this being a small sample (what is "almost 10"?), it is contrary to my experience. I have killed more elk with the .30-06 than any cartridge, and have also killed them not only with the .300 Winchester Magnum but the .300 WSM and Weatherby. None shot with the .30-06 went more than 50 yards before falling--and that includes my biggest bull, both in antlers and weight, which went about 20 yards after being shot at 250 yards with a 180-grain Trophy Bonded Tip. (And come to think of it, none of the elk Eileen and I have killed with various smaller cartridges have gone more than 50 yards either.)

It has always seemed a little odd to me that so many Norwegians and Swedes could kill moose very effectively with the 6.5x55, yet similar cartridges aren't nearly enough for elk. Now, those moose are smaller than some North American moose, more like Shiras than Canadian or Alaska-Yukon in size--and moose also don't tend to go as far as elk when hit "around the edges." But the do tend to die just as quickly as when hit with much larger cartridges, as the famous Swedish study of over 8000 moose kills indicates.

John,
I have taken many many wildebeest, zebra, and oryx, all of which are considered pretty sturdy. It doesn’t seem to matter if I use a 270 or a Big 7. With good placement they go 25-45 paces and fall over. Hit a little less optimally they might go 65-75 paces. Hit poorly they go miles.
Have been with many hunters shooting the same animals who used 300’s and 338’s and the results are the same with the only difference being that the cartridges with more recoil always cause the shooters’ marksmanship to deteriorate.
This year will be packing a 6.5 wildcat and expect results just like my 270.
Rick
PS I think a 6.5 CM with 120 monos would produce great results.
PS #2 I visited with Allen Day and he was a believer in the magnums. He especially liked the 338 and 416 Rem both of which were Echols Legend models. He was a far gone lover of fine rifles. I had one of his for a time and have handled several others. He made some trips to Africa but I don’t think there were that many. He was a really nice fellow.

Do Tell ! Details please
RinB 270 like 6.5 wildcats are intriguing … 🧐

Rick,

My experience is pretty much the same--especially after hunters with .300 and .338 magnums shot for a week or two. (Eileen and I have taken wildebeest, zebra and gemsbok with cartridges including the 7x57, .308 and .30-06 without any problems, with various bullets.)

A rare exception was a young guy on his first big game hunt of any kind, who used a .338 WM with 225 AccuBonds and killed his first 10 or so animals with zero problems, including several kudu and wildebeest. But he then wanted some blue wildebeest hides without holes in the body, so started trying for head shots. Dunno if the problem was "accumulated recoil" or just not enough knowledge of exactly where to hold, but he ended up chasing a couple around.

One of the other guys on the same month-long cull-hunt shot a blue WB behind the shoulder with a 140 AB with a 7mm-08, and it went around 50 yards before keeling over.

I have heard Allen Day was a really nice guy, but never met him. However, I do know he bitched to Nosler about the performance of 225 AccuBonds from a .338 Winchester on a safari he made--during the same year the guy I went on the cull with did so well with them. Nosler invited Allen to the factory, and tested some of his handloads in the same media they then used for every lot of bullets that went out the door. Allen's penetrated the same as usual. He then started telling them they were running their business all wrong, in ways other than making bullets--and if I recall correctly, offered to straighten them out.

Thanks for the feedback.

I look forward to your articles, your one of a few professional writer that speaks from experience rather than paid advertising. I’m looking forward to doing what will probably be a one time plains game hunt for my 50th birthday. I hate the idea of having to get vaxed. I see it as a mostly political statement so would rather not get lumped in with the vaxed. If/when I book a hunt it will be for Gemsbok, Kudu, Zebra, and Blue Wildebeest. I plan on hunting with my SAKO Classic 30/06 with Barnes 168 TTSX and mixing in a Ruger #1 300 H&H and 200 grain Swift A-frame.

I think your right and appreciate your experience. I can imagine an elk near dark at a few hundreds yards distance putting it down right their or very near would be an advantage over walking a few hundred yards with a flashlight and the having to look for hair or blood.

I can see a tougher bullet being ideal for larger framed critters. Most decent bullets will punch through some bone and drive through the lungs. Some of the biggest blood trails that I’ve seen on deer have been at our typical close ranges with the lowly nearly archaic 30-30. I get what you’re saying though. At longer ranges and near thick cover hunting a larger bigger boned animal a cartridge big enough and loaded with a bullet to feel comfortable getting a pass through shot and break down bones makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately for most of us big game is generally deer and as you said it doesn’t take a lot to shoot through both sides of a deer.

Long long ago I thought a 6.5 on a semi blown out 270/30-06/280 case would be the best trophy mule deer, sheep cartridge of all time. I know it won’t be any better than a slightly long throated 270 but decided to scratch that old itch when a pal got the reamer and dies made up.

When I first had that thought there weren’t the great bullets that are made today. I could spend a fortune on worldwide hunting with it and a 9.3-62 or 375.

John,

I have no line & the comment was not about any cartridge at all; I simply stated that drawing conclusions about bullet performance on whitetails is pretty worthless.....................UNLESS all you ever intend to hunt with that bullet is very light, small boned animals of similar size.

Most any bullet works quite well on whitetails.

As you, & everyone else here knows as well, that same bullet(s) that might be absolutely devastating death beyond compare on whitetails, may very well be an equally devastating disaster on elk, or moose, or even large mule deer, just to make the point.

MM

Interesting how the op was answered and how the thread has evolved in the same age old discussions.

I have no where near the experience or MD or RinB. But I have found most rodeos involve poor shot placement rather than cartridges or even bullets. As long as the bullet is somewhat matched for the job at hand.

Been in on hundreds of deer over the last 40 years. 22 to 45 caliber, archery and muzzleloader.
Half a dozen black bear with archery and 338-06's.
Around three dozen elk with 243 to 375 caliber and archery.
A couple of caribou with 270.
Another 40 years of antelope 22-338 caliber and archery.
18 African critters Impala to buffalo with 300, 338, 375 and 404 J.

Shot placement trumps.

Last Lemming,

Those two rifles will work fine--but as I have mentioned, some hunters start flinching when using a .300 magnum in Africa, even though they shot one well here. The reason is far more shooting--including a shot every day or two to check the zero, after bouncing around in a Toyota Land Cruiser.

Eileen planned to take blue wildebeest, zebra, and kudu on her first safari--though a kudu was a definite 3rd. Her primary big game rifle at the time was a .270 Winchester, and she'd heard African animals were very tough, so decided to take my NULA .30-06--despite having taken elk and moose handily with the .270. Back then (1999) Winchester Fail Safes were the most consistently accurate of the "petal" type bullets, so I worked up a load with 165s, which worked great on a big kudu and gemsbok (which she hadn't planned on, but there it was) on the first day of the safari. It was also worked great on a big blue wildebeest and red hartebeest a few days later. But by the time the shooting safari ended (we also spent some time touring afterward) she remarked that she could have done just as well with her .270 and the right bullets.

Her second safari took place in 2008, and by then she'd developed recoil headaches, so had switch from a NULA .270 to a custom .308 Winchester that weighed a little more. She use 150-grain Nosler E-Tips, which worked fine on a big zebra stallion, as well as several other animals--including a bushbuck where the bullet went through a Spanish prickly pear before it hit the buck. The bullet expanded before it hit the middle of the chest as the bushbuck faced her, yet still penetrated through the chest into the abdomen, dropping the buck right there.

Since then she's become ever more recoil sensitive, to the point where we switched to a 130 TTSX at about the same velocity as the 150 E-Tip, 2850 fps, and had a small muzzle brake put on the .308. It still kills bigger-than-deer game the same way, the last a cow elk that weighed close to 500 pounds. The cow stood quartering toward her at 250 yards, and the bullet broke the left front leg just above the big joint, ending up under the hide in the middle of the right ribs. The cow staggered 20-25 yards before it crumpled, obviously dead on its feet.

One of my companions on a 2007 safari killed a big bull gemsbok with the wimpy .270 Winchester and a 150-grain Partition, which like the blue wildebeest another guy took with the 140 AccuBond and a 7mm-08, went about 50 yards.

Have also seen plenty of those same animals go a LONG way after being shot in a slightly wrong spot with much larger cartridges. Perhaps the most extreme example was a gemsbok shot around the diaphragm (which isn't all that far back on gemsbok) with a .375 H&H and a 270-grain Barnes TSX. That involved a two-mile tracking job before he put another in the right place.
That contradicts the theory that a bigger magnum bullet helps when the shot isn't perfectly placed, but have seen too many similar incidents over the years involving "magnum" bullets that weren't placed very far off that also didn't kill well. One was a bull elk hit through the bottom of the heart with a 200-grain Partition from a .300 Weatherby Magnum. It would have died eventually, of course, but managed to go uphill for around 100 yards before another shot put it down.

Finn Aagaard once wrote that in his opinion a magnum MIGHT make a difference if a shot is off perhaps 2" from the ideal placement, but not otherwise. Some years after reading that, I tend to agree.

Am not saying you shouldn't take your .300, because it can be useful to take a second rifle. But the .30-06 with 168 TSXs is plenty for plains game.

I've killed almost 50 of those too, several have weighed over 300lbs live weight. They're not any harder to kill than a whitetail, IME, when a good bullet is put in the right place. Yes, that includes 6.5CM's.

JG,

That's my experience as well, and both Eileen and I have killed mule deer weighing 350-400 pounds (which overlaps elk size) using "deer cartridges." Have also seen 350-400 pound elk dropped neatly with cartridges like the .243 Winchester and .257 Roberts.

On a hunt here in southwestern Montana 3-4 years ago, some friends and I were after deer and elk. The country was a mix of open spaces, and fingers of thick timber on north slopes of ridges.

Two guys were shooting 6.5 Creedmoors, and both got shots at elk. One was using 140-grain Nosler AccuBonds, and encountered a 6x6 bull while hiking through thick timber to get to a glassing point. He shot the bull at 50 yards, which went 30-40 yards before keeling over--and the bullet exited.

The other guy (an experienced long-range shooter) shot at a bull at 450 yards, and hit it. But despite a blood trail the was never found. I don't remember what bullet he was using, but obviously nobody knows exactly where it landed. Was it the fault of the bullet, the cartridge or the shooter?

Right on MD. I have no clue on elk since I've killed only one in my life. I do remember specifically asking you about African game before I started going over the first time to hunt plains game. You answered something to the same effect as hitting them correctly with the right bullet and they will die like any other animal. Once again your experience was valuable, and correct, as I wound up killing about 50 of them over the years and all but 3-4 died exactly as you prescribed. The others were the results of bad hits, but that allowed me the privilege of following along with the miraculous African trackers who found them and we got them killed in spite of my piss poor shooting.

Seems to be a trend......and if I'm not mistaken Rin said much the same thing.

So, was there consensus ever reached on the original question, why the 7mm-08 doesn't get the attention that the 6.5 CM does?

More variety of rifles being cataloged for the 6.5 CM, wider distribution of factory ammo, less expensive factory ammo, at least before the pandemic hit, and for some reason 6.5 CM factory ammo seems generally to be accurate enough that handloading and subsequent load development isn't necessary to get MOA accuracy from most factory built rifles?

Some years ago, I opined that I'd believe that the 6.5 CM would achieve mainstream status when rifles and ammo was being sold at Walmart. Since then I seen both rifles, the CVA Cascade and Savage Axis, and Winchester/Olin ammo for sale at the local WMs, so I'm convinced that the 6.5 CM has achived sufficient momentum to sustain itself for some time to come.

Since getting my first 6.5 CM in 02/14, I've only bought or put together 3 rifles in 260 REM and I only bought those because they were from a limited non-cataloged run of RAR-Ps that only high volume stocking dealers like Whittaker's had access to. Ruger did that for 2 years that I know of, the first year in 25-06 and the second year in 260, and it looked like those rifles would be the start of a trend, but the trend seems to have ended at 2, with the only other non-cataloged chambering that I recall being in 6MM REM.

My current rifle count in 6.5 CM is 17 and in 7mm-08 is 3, so I guess that you'd say that I was leaning toward the Creedmoor.

Also, the 6.5 Creedmoor isn't just an American cartridge. One of my South African friends owns a big sporting goods store in Kimberley, and reported a year or two ago that 80% of the new rifles he was selling were chambered in 6.5 Creedmoor. There's a LOT of commercial culling in RSA (and some other African countries), because like Europe, game is owned by the landowners, and meat can be sold in supermarkets and restaurants. He reported the culler really liked the light recoil, and accuracy even with factory ammo.

While handloading is allowed in RSA, unlike some other African countries, a lot of cullers use factory when they can get it, to save time--which to them is money. In fact my friend uses a .22-250 for a lot of his smaller-animal culling, especially of springbok, and prefers Winchester ammo with 55-grain softpoints--which of course he gets wholesale. (When I hunted with him in 2007, he invited me to use his .22-250 for a day of springbok culling, an old Sako with a long suppressor, at that time on its 4th barrel after killing over 12,000 springbok.) But he reported the 6.5 CM provided more flexibility when culling both smaller and larger animals.

I stalked red deer in Scotland for many years. The gamekeepers’ favorite cartridge for the culling they did was the .243 Winchester.

I don’t own a Creedmoor. I do on a 7mm-08 which has taken buffalo, elk, and truckload of deer.

To me it looks like the Creedmoor is what sportsman have sought for 100 years.
An accurate firearm with well supported cartridge selection. A proper twist, a modern chamber without any prior handicaps like, wildcats or limitations because of old offerings.

A firearm that by consensus shoots very well out of the box with ammunition that is reasonably priced.

Can one duplicate or exceed the accuracy of a Creedmore? Yes. But not out of the box, and not cheaper.

It should be what sportsman want people to use. It should be the standard for any new cartridge. Accurate right out of the box, with all ammo.

Obviously, you've missed my point utterly & completely.

My comment was never about the headstamp whatsoever, only about bullet performance & using whitetails as a medium to just that performance by.

Bullets trump headstamps everyday, all day....................within reason.

Done with this nonsense.

MM

Are they saying you way too big a dude to be shooting a “woman’s” round?

Hmm…

DF