6 5 Creedmoor Versus 270 Winchester

oh it looks nasty out doesn't it it's cold man it's in the teens we don't want to go pheasant honey do you no you do oh we're crazy all right i'll tell you what to make your deal i'm going to do a little bit of work here in the studio with some filming and then if i get done in time we'll go out and chase a pheasant and freeze does that sound good all right it's the deal high five okay while covey is downstairs getting dressed for her pheasant hunt i want to talk to you guys about a little cartridge comparison one of the most reviled and loved cartridges of the last 20 or 30 years the 6.5 creedmoor of course but i want to compare it to the 270 winchester now some time ago i wrote a blog on these two cartridges and it got a lot of attention a lot of people were surprised to find out how these two matched up and we're going to do that in this video but before we do i want to talk a little bit about where that 65 creedmoor came from now it's actually been around for a long long time if you consider its precursor which is this it right here no that's the 260. oh it's right here look at that this little bit longer cartridge you're looking at right beside the creedmoor was the first 6.5 it came out in 1890 it was invented by the norwegian swedes one of those up there in scandinavian countries they came up with the real winner in 1890 yes 6.5 in 1890 and this thing has been used to hunt moose and caribou and even brown bears i mean that is a popular cartridge in northern europe and has been for that long that started the 6.5 craze but it never really got to the united states you know a few people would shoot that 6'5 and then there was a 6.5 man liquor schonauer and a beautiful slick little action i think hemingway used that in africa and even caramojo bell shot a few elephants with that a little 160 grain bullet and he brain shot him so the 6.5 has been making its mark for quite a while but in the states i don't think anything showed up with a 26 caliber bullet on it until winchester with the 20 with a 264 winchester magnum i don't think weatherby ever had one 270 307 don't think so so that was 1958 or 59 so that's a long time before we even got at 26. you know and after that it never really took off it was buried by the seven rem mag and then remington actually came out with a 6.5 in the 60s it was called a 6.5 rem mag and that was on a belted case like that 264 winchester but because of the problems that winchester had with throat burning in the barrels remington necked that or shortened that cartridge weight out so it was actually a short action 6.5 but that didn't go anywhere either 6'5 just weren't that popular in this country until the late but he's probably the 90s the 1990s these long-range target shooters playing with steel targets and all that stuff they wanted something that could reach out there without beating them up instead of a 300 win mag they looked for something like the 260 remington so this was a 308 winchester down to 26 caliber and that became pretty darn popular for that long range shooting stuff both for accuracy and for knocking over targets at long range now why would you bother taking that 308 which is pretty famous as a long range sniper cartridge and neck it down to 26. well because that 26 caliber bullet is skinnier and it gives you a higher ballistics coefficient a long skinny bullet is going to resist air drag that means it's going to resist blowing in the wind it's not going to well it's going to get downrange fast enough that the wind can't affect it as much as a heavier bullet a lower or a lower bc bullet so you put a high bc bullet on it and you also reduce the recoil and that's important in target shooting competitions where you have to shoot a lot because that recoil builds up after a while you start subconsciously flinching and blowing your shots so that was another part of the equation well the 260 was doing pretty darn well because of that efficient bullet then norma came out with the 6.5 by 284 norma which was really a legitimization of a wildcat cartridge that had also been working up some pretty good scores on that long range shooting stuff and that was the 284 winchester brass case necked down to 6.5 so what they all have in common of course is that .264 diameter bullet that they're shooting it's a 26 caliber and nowadays there's a lot more 26s there's a 26 nozzle 6.5 rpm from weatherby 6.5 by 300 from weatherby a real heavy powder burner and the 264 winchester still around what a lot of people say about the 6'5 is they either love it or they hate it because it gets hyped so much there's so many people that are just going on and on about that 6'5 creedmoor but they don't necessarily know what all the advantages or disadvantages of the cartridge are and so uh people will say why waste your time you've got the 65 by 55 suite i'll do anything it does the 260 remington will do anything it does why do you want to mesh around with it well the reason is probably because it is a fine-tuned target cartridge what hornaday's engineers did when they designed this was they looked at all of the pros of a good cartridge for target shooting and high volume target shooting what exactly did everybody want when they invented that 260 remington or the 65 by 284 well you want the lighter recoil we talked about you want a lower quantity of powder so you don't burn out your barrels because these guys will shoot hundreds and hundreds of rounds they'll burn out three or four barrels in a season if you can believe that so there's a lot of high volume shooting going along so let's hold that recoil down let's keep those long high ballistics coefficient bullets moving downrange and then let's design the case for lots of reloads anyone who hand loads knows that the cases eventually wear out and one of the problems you have with those cases is the neck stretches and you can build up what's called a donut inside right here at the junction of the neck and the shoulder you get a build up of material inside when you seat your bullets they are tighter they have extra friction and that raises pressures inside your barrel so what uh hornaday wanted to do was design the cartridge so that the long bullets did not protrude into the outer space they would just come down to the end of that junction right there on the neck now they've got an extremely long boat tail and a long tapered point on these bullets here's the hornady one the 143 eldx one of the more famous ones and then they had to change the barrel to work well with this you need to increase the throat length so that your bullet does not hit the rifling as you chamber that round and then you have to increase the twist rate and that is one of the biggest points that made this 6.5 creedmoor so effective and popular they just started from the get-go with a high twist barrel one turn in every eight inches that is a quick twist and that's what's needed to stabilize those efficient long-range bullets so you can go out and buy it any other point five and you'll probably get a one and nine or one in ten twist barrel they do pretty well but for really tight groups and efficiency and accuracy with those long long long bullets you want a one and eight twist there's where the creedmoor really shines so the the target aspects of that cartridge are pretty evident but what about hunting a lot of old-timers will say that's a joke for hunting because it's too slow at 2700 feet per second general average speed for 140 143 grain bullet it's a little bit slow it'll certainly do the job but it's a light bullet well the 270 winchester shoots 130 140 grain bullets so it's right in the wheelhouse for deer cartridge um most of our other popular deer rounds are shooting somewhere between a 100 grain bullet to 150 grain bullet you step up into the 30s and you might be pushing a 165 a few guys will go to 180s but that's generally all the recoil a deer hunter wants to take well what happens when you try an elk hunt well a young friend of mine just a couple of weeks ago when al cunning with his 6.5 creedmoor shot a nice 6x6 bull one shot 460 yards that's further than i've ever shot an elk but the point was his 140 or 143 grain yeah i think it was it was a hornady bullet i remember him telling me that so it must have been that 143. he took that elk with one shot does that mean it's the ideal alkyl cartridge or moose cartridge or any other larger game animal definitely not but it certainly can do the job and it is doing it now if the swedes have been shooting moose and caribou and bears and whatnot wild boars included with the 6.5 by 55 suite all these years has pretty much proven itself because that thing goes about the same speed as the creedmoor even though it has more powder space it is not designed to take as much pressure the standard pressure for this is 62 000 psi and if i'm not mistaken this 6.5 by 55 is only 56 000 so there's some of the differences you get when you've got a bigger case that doesn't produce as much velocity as the shorter one so you've got a pretty reasonable hunting cartridge here i would say this is just about ideal for whitetail mule deer pronghorn animals in that 100 to 250 pound range shouldn't have any trouble with it so if you want to use it as a hunting cartridge go ahead it's going to work just as well as the old suite or the 260 or the 65 284 and figure around 2700 feet per second with that 140 class bullet but if you want to go to a lighter bullet you can get a flatter trajectory and carry plenty of energy at typical hunting distances by going to one of the lighter bullets and as you can see with this big selection i've got here you can go clear down to a 95 grain bullet which is pretty good for lighter game environments or even just target practice at reasonable ranges to reduce the recoil then you can step up to 100 grain 107 120 are pretty popular and the 129s and 130s that probably falls right in wheelhouse for your average deer hunting bullet shoot it a little bit flatter but with the 140s to 143s what you're going to get that you don't get from those lighter bullets is wind resistance and that's one of the reasons it became so popular for long range shooting the one thing you cannot predict that bullet doing down range is drifting in the wind and at thousand-yard targets that wind can do a lot of crazy things between you and the target so the value that's really appreciated by the target shooters is that long high bc bullet's ability to resist that wind deflection you'll sacrifice a little bit of velocity you'll get a little more drop out of your bullet but drop is constant it's always the same at altitude so if you know what your drop is at say sea level versus ten thousand feet you lock that in you get those numbers in your head or put it on your scope dial it up that is going to be constant but the wind comes and goes so there's your value in those high bc bullets now what about the 270 why can't it compete well maybe it can and that's why i think that article i wrote that blog was so popular because there's a lot of fans of the 270 who are getting their toes stepped on by the 6'5 trademoor how does this old cartridge this standard length action actually hold up well you might be surprised i have produced some trajectory charts and we're going to look at those numbers we're going to compare recoil between these two and we're going to compare the wind deflection as well as the drop and the remaining energy downrange can the 6.5 tree moor really hold up to the old 270 winchester stay tuned [Music] now something else about the configuration of this 6.5 creedmoor case the shoulder on it is 30 degrees the 260 remington has a 20 degree shoulder this 6.5 by 55 has i think a 25 degree shoulder what's the big deal with the shoulder slopes well the sharper the shoulder the more powder space you gain so that's why the uh ackley improved cartridges were so popular those all have a 40 degree angle on it so it's pretty flat and that increases your powder capacity but some complain that it interferes with chambering you know as you ramp up you might get it hooked on there slow down your chambering or even get a little bit of a jam i have never found that to be the case with even the 40 degree angles but these days it seems like all these new cartridges are pretty much standardizing with that 30 degree slope so you've got that you've got a pretty straight sidewall if you compare it closely with this you'll see that the old swede has a little more slope to it now the taper on a cartridge is just so that it can easily extract and back in the days of early smokeless powder they would sometimes get high pressures and the cases would stick to the side walls so they gave them a lot of slope modern cartridges are really getting away from that and going pretty darn straight you'll also notice that the head size the rim size and the body size are identical there are so many cartridges that have that point four seven three inch rim size and the body size at point four seven zero the thirty odd six family of cartridges the 308 winchester family of cartridges is just a whole lot of them out there and they all spraying from this and or the 757 mauser we'll have to do a little more historical research to figure out which one came first but once they standardized that all the other cartridge makers pretty much keyed off of it because rifles were built to fit that size so a lot of different cartridges were built on that head size and six five creedmoor is no exception and here are the drop drift and energy ballistic numbers six five creedmoor versus 270 winchester you can see the bc of the bullet 143 grain bc 625 2700 feet per second pretty standard for the 6'5 270 with 140 grain bullets your bc is less quite a bit 496 but you've got more velocity but that's the result less drop with that 270 at 300 yards at 500 yards heck all the way out to 900 yards it shoots flatter but the 6'5 creedmoor wins in the wind deflection category and that's the toughest thing now go to the 129 for a little more velocity and a flatter trajectory four inches of drop versus six inches and it matches up with 150 grain bullet in the winchester we went 150 here to get our bc up but then of course we lost some velocity but those are the numbers you can just study them look through the whole thing and you'll begin to understand how all this stuff works really they're fairly closely matched which adds legitimacy to anybody who says the 6.5 creedmoor does compare with the 270 winchester and if you're at all concerned about recoil well let's look at this 243 winchester pretty light kicking everybody knows that's a sweetheart to shoot that gives you an idea of your energy recoil foot pounds of energy 10 the velocity at which it comes back to your shoulder 9 feet per second compare that with a 6-5 creedmoor with a light bullet with a heavier bullet winchester with a heavy bullet notice these two quite a bit more recoil from the 270. not enough that i think bothers anybody but some people are quite sensitive to recoil so you might want to consider that and then i threw a three out six in here with 150 grain bullet because the military a long time ago determined that that was about what the average american soldier could shoot accurately all day in in a fighting situation didn't beat him up too badly so that's a good benchmark 21.7 foot pounds of energy and then for the elk hunters anybody who likes a heavier bullet the 180 it's going to ramp up the recoil anytime you get a heavier bullet and higher velocity you get more recoil well that's my comparison of the 6'5 creedmoor and the 270 winchester and the great thing is you get to decide what's going to work best for your brand of shooting and hunting now i would heartily invite you to subscribe to this youtube channel give us your support you can also find us on patreon a great little app that enables you to join the ron spormer outdoors community and contribute more toward what we produce we really appreciate all of our patreon subscribers and you can find us at our youtube right here but also ronsformeroutdoors.com website where we have lots of written material about this sort of stuff and we're on instagram at ron spohmer outdoors we're on facebook at ron's former outdoors and now i'm doing podcasts in which i read some of the old magazine articles i started writing way back in 1976 and it's kind of fun to go back and listen to those and and see what has changed over the years because by golly it really has not just rifles and cartridges but scopes optics boots just everything even hunting techniques so join us on the podcast uh most of your podcatchers will have it but you can go to ronspomeroutdoors.com and listen to them there as well and uh that's about it for now we're gonna get back outside here covey is whining she wants to go chase those pheasants we've got a couple hours of daylight left so we're gonna get outside enjoy some hunting and shooting of our own remember hon honest and shoot straight [Music] you

Channel: Ron Spomer Outdoors

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Keywords: outdoors, ron spomer outdoors, ron spomer, hunting, firearms, guns, shooting sports, rifles, big game hunting, hunting gear, hunting gear review, rifle review, gun review, 6.5 Creedmoor, 6.5x55, 6.5x55 Swede, 6.5 Swede, 270 Winchester, 270 Win., Creedmoor, 6.5 Remington Magnum, 264 Winchester Magnum, 264 Win. Mag., 260 Rem, 260 Remington, Hornady, 308 Winchester, bullets, calibers, cartridges, ammunition, ammo, 6.5 Mannlicher

Id: ym5QWbLyFQs

Length: 19min 39sec (1179 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 31 2020