.264 Win. 6.5 PRC, 6.5 SAUM

Weberwood, I already have a nice 6.506.
The plan here was to utilize this action to the fullest, not leave anything on the bench, so to speak..
After deer season I may rething the whole 6.5 cal bullet group and go 7mm mag again....??????
 
I've never been very impressed with the .264 Winchester Magnum.

Burns a lot of powder, ballistics just aren't that special, and I've never seen one that's particularly accurate. And to be honest, I really dislike belted cartridges.

To be perfectly honest, if I were looking at a 6.5mm cartridge, I'd very likely go either the wildcat 6.5-06 or stick with the .260 Remington.

Yeah, maybe not using the action to its fullest as you want, but were I to do that, I'd likely go .257 Weatherby.
 
Mike, I agree with you to an extent on the 264 Win. Mag. I have four of them and have re-barreled several times. What I have found is the rifle is with a 24" barrel, balistically inferior to a .270 Win. With a 26" barrel, it slightly edges the 270. With a 28" barrel, it starts to become the man it was intended to be. With a 30" barrel, it is a screaming monster that is giving the velocity it should for the powder it burns.
 
As intriguing as the large cased 6.5s are, I would personally shy away from them. If I were to get a 6.5 of some flavor, one of the more efficient ones would be on my list, 260 Rem 6.5 creedmoor. My reasoning is that, while the shove will be less, the magnums will still have all the biscuits kuzzle blast of a magnum without the hitting power. The new high bc bullets in 7mm and .30 cal are no less efficient than anything in 6.5 and their greater projectile mass provides more "insurance" when using projectiles designed to expand or fragment at long range. The 6.5 magnums require longer barrels for lesser performance and power with just as bad muzzle blast. The medium cased 6.5s are a different story. Low blast, very light recoil, normal barrel length, and the ability to carry game killing amounts of energy and penetrating mass out effectively to appreciably greater distances than other cartridge of their recoil and blast level (the .243 kind of sucks)
 
"Would my jon boat work?"

Nah, that's just an armed barge.

But you're right, the .264 really requires a longer barrel in order to shine, and therein lies the problem... it was never available from Winchester with anything longer than a 26" barrel, and often not even that. I don't believe that the offerings from any of the other manufacturers were any better, meaning that to really take advantage of the cartridge's potential, you had to rebarrel your gun with a custom tube.

Really easier just to buy a 7mm Remington Mag., which offered almost identical ballistics but with a heavier bullet. And it didn't have nearly the reputation for washing out leads and throats that the .264 did.

And that's what most people seemed to do.
 
My experience is that the 264 win mag chewed up and spit out factory Winchester barrels. Stainless Liljas have a very acceptable life. I shoot one of my win mags in 1k competition when the wind is howling.
 
I have a 6.5x284 Norma its a great caliber, I would look in to it, my be what you are looking for !!!
 
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