When Hornady released the 6.5 Creedmoor, it promised to unseat the .308 Winchester in popularity with its claims of flat trajectory, superior wind deflection, low recoil, and other positive attributes. We have all had a great deal of time and experience to see how the Creedmoor stands up to its purported goal, so let’s take a closer look at the cartridge.
Quick Summary: While the ever-popular .308 Winchester isn’t going anywhere, the 6.5 Creedmoor round has proven to be a versatile, efficient, and capable round for everything from target punching to elk hunting. Plus, you can find just about any rifle you want chambered in 6.5 CM.
Table of Contents
History
Breaking Down the Numbers
Diving Deeper
Paper Puncher vs. Hunting Cartridge
Why Choose the Creedmoor?
Conclusion
History
The Creedmoor case was designed to meet certain criteria: small enough to feed from short actions, fit neatly in magazines, and provide enough power to propel high-ballistic-coefficient bullets to a reasonable speed.
You might ask why, when there was already a well-established cartridge that did just that. The .260 Remington performs much like the Creedmoor but has long fallen by the wayside.
Cartridge designers based the Creedmoor case on the .30 Thompson Center case and necked it down to .264 with a 30-degree shoulder. The Creedmoor case is a bit shorter than the .260 Remington and the popular .308 Winchester. This is by design, as it allows room to seat the longer, high-BC bullets that make the cartridge perform so well.
You can shoot the exact same bullets from the .260 Remington, and often at faster velocity – but you’ll have a hard time getting them to fit and feed from a box magazine.
Perhaps just as important as the Creedmoor’s performance was the huge support of the cartridge from Hornady and other manufacturers. Excellent bullets and ammunition lines of Creedmoor cartridges ensured that people shot the cartridge and quickly learned of its value in shooting.
Breaking Down the Numbers
A look at the raw numbers of the 6.5 Creedmoor sheds some light on its success. The Creedmoor case head uses the same .473 bolt face as many popular cartridges, making it easy to chamber all the popular rifles in 6.5 Creedmoor.
The maximum SAAMI overall length for the 6.5 Creedmoor is 2.825 inches, only .015 longer than the .308 Winchester. Thus, it’s compatible with the plethora of magazine systems for precision rifles designed around the .308.
The capacity of the Creedmoor is slightly less than the .308 Winchester; it holds 52 grains compared to the .308’s 56 grains. This is likely due to the shorter case, but the Creedmoor has a trick up its sleeve over the .308.
Higher BC bullets like those used in the Creedmoor are more efficient. Two bullets with identical ballistic coefficients fired at the same velocity will perform similarly, but a bullet with a higher BC fired at a higher velocity will do much better on its way to the target.
Diving Deeper
Using a real-world application as an example, let’s look at two of the most popular precision loads for the 6.5 and .308. The Federal Gold Medal Match 175-grain load has long been the literal gold standard for .308 sharpshooting, and the Hornady Match 140 ELDM is pretty much the equivalent for the Creedmoor.
The .308 has a 35-grain weight advantage, but it comes with a lower muzzle velocity of 2,600 fps. The Creedmoor, while lighter, starts out a bit faster, with a muzzle velocity of 2,710 fps. The .308 has an energy advantage in the first 300 yards, but after that it quickly loses ground to the Creedmoor.
The Creedmoor never loses its velocity advantage, thanks to its superior bullet efficiency. Being fired at a higher muzzle velocity, the lighter bullet reaches higher velocities with similar or less powder charges.
The drop of both bullets in inches also shows a clear advantage for the Creedmoor. The .308 requires significantly more corrective elevation at distance. Though I didn’t graph it here, the wind deflection shows the same trend. The 6.5 bullets are less affected by wind drift than the larger-diameter .308 bullets, and the faster speed and shorter flight time gives the wind less time to affect the 6.5 Creedmoor.
All these numbers are a fairly broad comparison, and only to the .308 Winchester. If you were to compare the same data to a .260 Remington, there would be little difference. The same might be said for the 6.5×55 Swedish Mauser cartridge or the 6.5×47 Lapua. The curves you see here are why some people say the 6.5 Creedmoor gives .300 WM ballistics with less recoil than a .308 Win.
Paper Puncher VS. Hunting Cartridge
Many 6.5 Creedmoor detractors like to relegate it to a target round only. Considering the numbers we just went over, it’s laughable when these same folks say something along the lines of, “I’d rather hunt with something with more power like the .308.”
It would be silly to reduce the Creedmoor to a target round, although it does the job well. The same attributes that help it excel on the target range make it a good choice for hunters. Excellent wind deflection and flat, accurate shooting are just as important for competitive shooters.
Feeding from a detachable box magazine is more of a sport function than a hunting one, as many hunters still use the simple two or three round top-load magazines. The Creedmoor does well from either.
We have used the 6.5 Creedmoor many times for deer and elk hunting. it does a fantastic job putting energy in the right spot, and the excellent bullet selection allows you to tailor loads to fit your needs. It might be a bit on the light side for elk hunting, but the Swedes have been using their 6.5 on moose for the last century. The Creedmoor produces similar – if not superior – results, depending on how it is loaded.
Why Choose the Creedmoor?
With other cartridges performing so closely to the Creedmoor, why choose it? The best answer to that question is “options.” The Creedmoor enjoys more support than all these competitors. You can find almost any rifle chambered in 6.5 CM these days, but you probably won’t find a Ruger American chambered in 6.5×47 – just like you won’t find many 6.5×55-chambered rifles these days.
Speaking of finding things, if a sporting goods retailer sells ammunition, it likely has 6.5 Creedmoor. The store probably doesn’t have some of the others mentioned.
When it comes to ammunition, the Creedmoor also has an advantage due to its popularity. Browsing ammunition for sale on Guns.com, typical costs for 6.5 Creedmoor are around $1.50 per round. The 6.5 Swede is a bit higher, at around $1.80 per round, and the 6.5×47 Lapua averages around $3 per round, making it a bit more posh.
