Cartridge Families (3) - The Quarter-Inchers
Kim du Toit
June 3, 2006
7:20 AM CDT
Often called “medium” cartridges*, the quarter-inch (.25” and 6.5mm) family happens to be my favorite caliber. Indeed, if some malignant authority decreed that I could only shoot one rifle caliber for the rest of my life, the 6.5x55mm Swede would probably top the list. Here’s a sample of them:
Armed with one of these, you could hunt just about any non-dangerous game on the planet, with complete confidence. In fact, with some of the magnums, you could even hunt dangerous game too. Roy Weatherby’s favorite Cape buffalo cartridge was the .257 Wby Magnum—provided that it was topped with a decent bullet like the Nosler Partition or Trophy Bonded Bear Claw.
Which is the point with all these cartridges. To my mind, they exemplify the cartridges which can “do everything”—and especially if you add to the mix their relatively-gentle recoil.
On the left, of course, is a sample of the military 6.5mm cartridges. I happen to think that they are the perfect caliber for the military—the 7mm/.30 cartridges may be a little too much in terms of recoil, whereas the 6.5mm ones are a perfect mix of deadliness and comfort. (I note that the proposed replacement for the poodleshooter .223 Rem is a 6.8mm cartridge fired from a short, fat cartridge. 6.5mm would have been just as good.)
Another thing: it’s hard to find a group of cartridges which has been ignored by manufacturers for so long, and yet which stayed in existence because of their near-fanatical users.
The .25-06 Rem, for example, has been declared dead on several occasions by the cognoscenti—yet it lives on, beloved by its users, and killing all sorts of game.
The 6.5mm Swede was all but forgotten, until the Swedish M96 Mausers became popular, and people discovered just how good a hunting cartridge it really is. Now almost all the major rifle manufacturers are starting to produce rifles thus chambered.
The .243 Win is another “sleeper”—although varmint hunters have been singing its praises ever since it was first introduced back in 1955.
The 257 Roberts has often been called the “most useful rifle cartridge ever developed”.
I think pretty much the same can be said for just about the entire family of quarter-inchers. Accurate, hard-hitting, flat-shooting, easy on the shoulder. Does one need anything more of a cartridge? I think not.
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*except in the African sense, where anything less than .4x is “medium”, and anything less than .3x is “varmint”.
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