Top 3 Bullets for 6.5 Creedmoor

Johnny Get Your Gun Get Your Gun get your guns hello and welcome to Frontline rejects today we're talking about my top three hunting bullets for the 6'5 Creedmoor introduced in 2008 by Hornady the 65 Creed rapidly took the target shooting World by storm and is today one of the most popular Centerfire rifle cartridges while it excels at punching paper and steel it ranges out too and sometimes exceeding a thousand yards it has also grown to be a very popular big game round so of course we'll be covering three bullet categories one cup in core one bonded and one monolithic but before we do we need to clarify a couple of points first of which is what I would comfortably hunt with this cartridge I personally would limit my use of the 6'5 Creed to deer and similar size game I recognize that many very talented Hunters have used this cartridge with great success on larger games such as elk but it's not the first thing I would reach for when going on an elk hunt so the bullets I'm picking today are going to be more geared towards deer hunting the second point is we need to Define what range I would comfortably use these projectiles out to which of course we'll talk about with each bullet specifically but generally I don't plan on taking shots past 4 or 500 yards semi projectile choices are representative of that and so to clarify the bullets we were talking about today are what I would consider the best general purpose bullets for hunting deer-sized game out to around four or five hundred yards if an individual is looking to do something else like hunt larger game or hunt at longer ranges there are better projectile options in this chambering for that application all that said let's get into my pick for the best cup and core bullet in the 6'5 Creedmoor which is the 129 grain Winchester PowerPoint 140 or 143 grain bullets tend to be much more common in six five Creedmoor loadings but I really like bullets in the 130 grain range it's easy to see the appeal of heavier bullets when you look at the BC figures on options like the 143 eldx or Bond strike which helps them carry a lot of energy at longer range while doing a great job of deflecting wind and 120 grain options have good velocity in the low to mid 2900s but for me I find this sweet spot in 6.5 Creedmoor with about 130 grains in the mid 2800 foot per second velocity range back to the PowerPoint I'm a huge fan of budget options that just do their job well which from our prior testing is what the 129 grain PowerPoint is it's an extremely affordable option that has solid performance inside of 400 yards now for our drop calculations today we'll be using the velocity data posted on the back of the box of Winchester's Factory loaded Super X ammunition normally I'd go with low data from Nosler or another reputable Source but what makes this bullet my go-to pick is in part the factory ammunition it's offered in not everyone who hunts is a hand loader and the Winchester Factory ammunition using this bullet has a couple factors going for it first off it's affordable and available I've seen this stuff in stock at a couple local gun stores throughout the pandemic for reasonable prices around thirty dollars per box and this makes it a great option for someone who would like to practice with the same ammunition they hunt with without breaking the bank so with our muzzle velocity of 2820 out of what we're guessing would be a 24 inch barrel we have a maximum Point Blank Range zero of 257 yards for a Target diameter of 8 inches we're going with an 8 inch diameter as that should sufficiently cover the vital Zone radius of most deer meaning that as the bullet flies through its trajectory it'll rise to a height of four inches above line of sight at 150 yards it'll drop four inches below line of sight at just about 300 yards the advantage of the max PBR 0 being that you can hold dead on anywhere inside your mpbr range and have reasonable Assurance of a vital Zone strike so a hunter using this ammunition and mpvr zero could engage deer quickly and with ease inside of 300 yards without having to worry about compensating for drop and they'd be doing that with a solid bullet that just performs well it'll expand to around 2.3 times its original size and retain roughly 80 percent of its weight making it a great bullet even if you're getting into heavier weight class muellies there are several good options for cup and core bullets that would be more than adequate for hunting deer within the 6'5 realm and many viable picks for the runner-up such as the Remington core locked or Nosler ballistic tip but in the end what won out was the Hornady eldx the eldx in this chambering is a fantastic performer we've got a video coming out on it soon it's got a really high BC so very good flight characteristics but loaded ammunition is about 50 more expensive and it actually retains less weight than the PowerPoint slot number two goes to my top pick for a bonded core bullet which is the 130 grain Federal terminal Ascent the terminal Ascent is in my opinion kind of like the unicorn of hunting bullets meaning it's flashy and hard to find and as a side gripe I'd like to register my complaint that Federal doesn't offer it any enough grain weights and diameters for me to ever make it my go-to bullet but when one of the limited offerings that it comes in happens to fit your application and when you can find it it's a fantastic choice so looking at the load data source directly from Federal's website using a Max recommended charge of reloader 26 we can produce 28 85 feet per second with a 24 inch barrel and we can effectively get the same velocity using hydrogen hybrid 100v as well and both of those are compressed charges but I've never been shy about stuffing cases tight so we'll use 2885 for our drop calculations and when we load that into jbm ballistic software again assuming a 50 degree day at sea level our maximum PBR 0 is 276 yards with a maximum Point Blank Range of 325 yards that gives us about a 24 yard gain over the Winchester PowerPoint but out at 500 yards with the TA we've got about 2.5 MOA less drop which is definitely noticeable the terminal Ascent is a solid performer average expansion is usually around two and a quarter times original size but we're going to retain closer to 90 percent of its weight and it will expand reliably at lower velocities now I had two options in mind for the runner-up the first being the 143 normal Bond strike but that's out of the weight class I wanted to stick to so the winner for the runner-up had to be the 129 grain Nosler accubond long range the TA actually beats the ablr's BC with a 0.532 versus 0.53 so a rather minuscule difference but the TA walks away with higher weight retention figures and expansion is comparable if I was planning on shooting long range say an excess of 500 yards I would probably go with the ablr as I think it expands better at lower velocities but again these choices are what I'd pick if I'm staying inside of 4 or 500. our third category is monolithic or all copper rounds and yes I do understand that most copper bullets use a copper or gilding metal alloy and are not pure copper but I find it easier to group them all together with this nomenclature as they are extremely similar in Metallurgy and construction so my pick for the top monolithic bullet in the 6'5 Creed is the 127 grain Barnes lrx now the lrx is barnes's long range offering from their All Copper lineup and as such it's designed to open up at lower velocities recommended minimum impact velocity is around 1600 feet per second as opposed to 2000 or so for the ttsx I find that using the lrx in place the ttsx in cartridges with modest muzzle velocities allows me to not have to worry so much about my impact speeds even when I'm limiting myself to closer shots the lrx's also come with slightly improved BCS meaning less drag over the TTS X's so in looking at barnes's load data available on our website they state that when running a 24 inch barrel and using a maximum recommended charge of stable 6.5 we can achieve 28 83 feet per second which is very similar to what federal predicts we can get out of the 130 Terminal Ascent we take that and our BC of 0.468 and throw it in the ballistic calculator and we get a maximum PBR 0 of 273 yards with an mpbr of 321 yards pretty darn close to r130ta and as we mentioned earlier Barnes recommends at least 1600 feet per second of impact velocity and with this loading we don't cross that threshold until somewhere in between 750 to 800 yards so if we're staying inside 500 we shouldn't have to worry the runner-up today is a newer kit on the Block Hornady brought the CX to market last year and we've tested several of the options in the lineup so far on this channel what impressed us about the CX is its ability to expand very well at lower velocities so the 130 grain Hornady CX fills the runners up slot well as it was a serious Contender for first place so to recap in no particular order my top three general purpose bullets for the 6.5 Creedmoor are the 129 grain Winchester PowerPoint the 130 grain Federal terminal ascent and the 127 grain Barn's lrx if you got something out of today's content consider hitting the like button and drop a comment below with your favorite bullet for 6'5 Creedmoor if you'd like to stay up to date with what we're doing here on the channel hit the Subscribe button thanks for watching and we'll see you next time foreign

Channel: Frontline Rejects

Views: 27,370

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Id: DXokgttvGlk

Length: 9min 33sec (573 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 05 2023