What if the 6.5 PRC had preceded the 6.5 Creedmoor?

[J E Custom]

In my opinion, the cartridge is not the issue. now days the shooting world is very fickle'd and will change direction In a heart beat when a new wonder cartridge comes out because of marketing or just a catchy name. Most of them don't replace anything and are just another cartridge that performs like other well known cartridges.

If you think about it the cartridge is just a powder container and has very little if any bearing on accuracy. The type of weapon, The quality of the Smithing, The prowess of the reloader and most of all the ability of the shooter has the most impact on accuracy. As stated earlier a good cartridge will stand the test of time, the also ran will not.

There is no perfect cartridge for everything, Just one that is good at one thing.
With enough thought and quality work ANY cartridge can be accurate. In the hands of an expert shooter any cartridge can be impressive, but the most accurate rifle in the hands of a casual shooter is not impressive at all. these are the guys that think if they buy the latest designer cartridge, it will instantly make them a one hole shooter of groups.

This all sounds very cynical But it is what it is, as they say.

Just my opinion and beliefs

J E CUSTOM

 

[Ranger Rick]

Survey says ... What ifs and hypotheticals allow for opinions. The 6.5 Creedmoor and 6.5 PRC are different, and they meet different needs of different shooters. I sold my 6.5 Creedmoor after shooting a braked 6.5 PRC, and I am now working (waiting) on a new PRC build. For me if the 6.5 PRC came out first, I would only be in that camp. I am impressed by the 6.5 Creedmoor ammo options and believe the 6.5 PRC will follow.
Cheers to America's gun industry

 

[30BR]

The PRC would have had a much harder time being accepted.
The CM was designed off the 30TC, not the 308, and was built expressly for NRA across the course shooting (200,300 and 600 yard iron sight competition). The lower recoil impulse assists in rapid fire stages where 10 rounds with a mag change need to be fired in 60 or 70 seconds.
So the PRC would never have been used at all in that competition, which is what catapulted the 6.5 to acceptance.

 

[ntsqd]

Racing philosophers call it the "Green Valve Cover" syndrome. The guy who wins the big race happens to have painted his valve covers green. Must be a speed secret there, so the next race has a lot of green valve covers. My old next door neighbor used to do stuff like that specifically to mess with his competitors. I recall he once cut the rocker covers in half, and then had them welded back together. Most of the other racers went nuts thinking that he'd done something to the cylinder heads that caused him to have to modify the rocker covers and they were so distracted trying to figure out what he'd done that they didn't race very well.

6.375 Xanadu wins two comps in a row, so there must be some competitive edge there. Next comp a bunch of guys have 6.375 Xanadu's never understanding that it was the 'driver' of the rifle who had the competitive edge, not the chambering.

 

[Lonnie Pendleton]

I was thinking about the choices of calibers and what caused me enough excitement to desire purchasing a new rifle in a particular caliber. Then, I got to thinking about what would have happened if I had waited for a couple of years to see what new improvements would have presented themselves.
What brought my attention to this is the 6.5 caliber. The 6.5 Creedmoor became the best kid on the block in the world of rifles. Superbly accurate, low recoil and a long range shooting dream. Millions have been purchased. But it was fairly slow and was not really a long range hunting round. So, in need of speed and longer range kill shots the 6.5 PRC. evolved. But, what if the 6.5 PRC would have come first? Would the Creedmoor have ever made it? If given the choice between the two, would anyone buy it over the PRC? The 6.5x.284 was performing ballisticly equal but, because it was a wildcat in name it didn't catch on like the 6.5 PRC. Yet, all of the new bullet designs are really a wildcat made by reforming a larger caliber case for the most part.
Now, the 6.5 PRC and it's brother, the 300 PRC are becoming the most desirable calibers being purchased.
So, what do you think? If the 6.5 PRC had come first would the 6.5 Creedmoor have made it?

the one thing that stops me from buying a prc is the availability of brass and the cost,for now i will stick with my creed.

 

[Tex_Hunter]

Different tools for different jobs. I have 1/4", 3/8", and 1/2" drive ratchet in my toolbox even though I can get fair amount of overlap in the sized of sockets I can get for each of them.

The 6.5 Creedmoor was originally designed to be a PRS/Practical/Tactical style match cartridge with an optimized case design that addressed some of the inefficiencies in the design of the 260 Remington; namely a shorter body with less taper, steeper shoulder, longer neck all in an effort to make a very effective flat shooting low recoil cartridge that could seat long/heavy for caliber high BC 6.5mm bullets in a magazine fed short action. Along the way, people found out that coincidentally all of these features also made it an outstanding hunting round for medium sized game at intermediate ranges.

The 6.5 PRC is a different animal entirely. It shares some of the same characteristics of its little brother, but I would argue its primary role is to serve as a intermediate to long range hunting round. Case size and resulting mag capacity as well as additional recoil and decreased barrel life effectively rule it out for PRS/Practical style match shooting. Those competitions are dominated by the small 6 and 6.5mm rounds (all 308 win case derivatives).

With that in mind, I doubt the timing of the two introductions makes either one of them obsolete, or will drive any mass switchover to from one to the other. As others have noted, the advantages of factory support from Hornady and the aggressive marketing and support gives them all the staying power they need.

For me? I hunt (sometimes at ranges that would be considered "long range") and I shoot PRS matches pretty regularly, so I own a 6.5 Creedmoor that is geared towards match shooting. I also handload and with 143gr ELD-X my current setup carries >1000 ft lbs of energy out past 800yds even assuming very low density altitude, so yes, I may get a PRC at some point, but it would be a very hunting biased setup.

 

[BrentM]

Already been said. I have the CM's, 6.5-284, 260, 243, PRC.....The 6.5-284 was not supported enough from ammo or gunmakers and competition experiences ruined it. People get all weird about barrel life. The CM gets a ton of factory ammo, but keep in mind it took nearly 10 years to get good momentum going. Barrel life and competition based recoil is far better in a CM then a 284 or PRC. The advantage the PRC has is that it can run on a SA platform and in the PRS type comp world that is what people desire. Only reason I stepped from the 284 was so I could run a SA switch barrel set up. I do like my PRC a lot, it is legit, but I struggle with it replacing the CM in general

 

[Tex_Hunter]

Meant to add in my earlier post, I think the Ruger Precision Rifle has more to do with the 6.5 Creedmoor's success than probably any other factor. Most PRS guys were running a 6.5x47 Lapua if they wanted a "Better 260". The RPR introduced the Creedmoor to the masses, that coincided with the explosion of factory match and hunting ammo for the Creedmoor.

 

[Greyfox]

It's a good question that we will never know the answer for sure. I personally think that were the 6.5 PRC introduced first, it would not have had the equivalent acceptance that the CM had. The CM gained traction and popularly as a shooters cartridge with the Ruger PR and the ramp up of PRS competition. All this brought attention to the 6.5's ballistic potential which was fairly obscure, at least in the US. The initial impact of the CM was the ballistic performance in long range targets.....Hunting applications followed. Were the PRC introduced as a hunting cartridge, the market acceptance may have been far more clouded with the many variables and multitude of preferences present when hunting is a primary purpose. As a target round, the trend had already begun to drift towards dimensional smaller cartridges, as demonstrated by the 6.5x284 replacements. IMO, introducing the CM first was the smart move.

 

[ntsqd]

I must admit to a little amusement and a little chagrin over the 6.5mm bore. I've mentioned this before, my former boss, Mike Harms (RIP), told me sometime in the late 1980's that the 6.5's were grossly over-looked and that they would eventually be "discovered". He thought that the .264 WM was decades ahead of it's time and that it and 6.5's on the whole would see a resurgence in popularity. He felt that the the typically heavy for caliber 6.5 bullets would result in superior ballistics once there was interest on the part of bullet makers in making high BC 6.5mm projectiles. Unfortunately he did not live to see his prediction come true. I learned a lot from Mike, much more than I appreciated at the time. Where ever he is, I hope that he can see me appreciating it now.

I own a 6.5CM, have for almost a year. I still need to actually shoot it and get the barrel broken in. The PRC does nothing that I need, or even want in spite of no need. So I'd have waited for the CM had the PRC come first.

 

[Johnslam]

I think it all comes down to the cult-like following and the huge marketing campaign Hornady pushed. If they hyped the PRC up they way they did the creed I'm sure it would be just as popular. The creed may have been designed with NRA shooters in mind; however, it's the average joe that is driving sales. Average Joes love new, shiny and exciting things.

 

[Jon Bischof]

I'm a new 6.5 Creedmoor owner. I bought mine for hunting because of these reasons:
1. Wanted to hunt with a lower-recoil rifle than my other rifles (338 WM, 300 WM, 30-06, 308, 270 WSM).
2. Today's Hunting Bullets are better than they used to be, enabling one to hunt with a smaller caliber and still get good terminal performance on game.
3. Large variety from many makers of factory ammo.
4. I also liked what I saw of the trajectory of the Creedmoor, the way the higher BC Bullets seemed to catch up to other cartridges after the first few hundred yards.

The 6.5 PRC does not appear to have much support so far from ammo makers other than Hornady. Maybe it will in the future.

 

[lightshooter]

I think they're both good and both very different, and I don't know why they get compared so much. They both have their place. It's like saying the 7mm-08 sucks because the 7mm RUM goes further and hits harder.

 

[Jon Bischof]

I think they're both good and both very different, and I don't know why they get compared so much. They both have their place. It's like saying the 7mm-08 sucks because the 7mm RUM goes further and hits harder.

Funny you should mention 7mm-08, that is one of the softer-kicking cartridges I pondered before I settled on the Creedmoor. I know a lot of folks like it for that reason. I knew a couple of guys at our deer camp that hunted with the .257 Roberts and so I considered it too. The 7-08 can shoot heavier bullets, the .257 Roberts, lighter bullets than the 6.5, but the Creedmoor seemed to have advantages over both of them. And just the wide variety of new ammo available for the Creedmoor made the decision easy. And I'm very happy with it so far.
If I hunted in a place where longer shots were the norm, I might feel differently and might even buy a true long-range rifle. But for now I don't have that opportunity unless I take a trip out West. So for my present situation I'm practicing out to 400 yards and I'm confident at that range. Will try to go farther soon with my present rifles.