Deciding on the three best flat-shooting cartridges does not come down simply to one statistic, but a combination of all the factors inherent to a cartridge. Still, if youre goal is to push heavy projectiles to the outer reaches, Noslers 28 may be the best 7mm option out there. A bullet with bigger BC will fly farther and faster than one with a lower coefficient. For years the bullet weighing 160 grains was optimum for all-around use, but today ammo makers offer heavier, high-BC match bullets like Berger 180gr VLD bullet with a 0.684 BC. Learn More: Top Ballistic in-Flight Behaviors [With Pictures]. Not a lot of difference in drops between the cartridges though; you need accurate yardage readings to get your drop correct. But if it isnt, go read the article again. The following table averages multiple loads for each cartridge and shows an average amount of drop at 500 yards and 1,000 yards for each cartridge. However, I fully admit that that a flat shooting cartridge is not nearly as important as a cartridge which is resistant to wind deflection. (For anyone who gets worked up about the fact that the .30/06 isnt on this list, feel free to swap it with this one, as long as you dont mind the extra kick. Loaded with the highest BC .264 caliber bullets, the 26 Nosler keeps heavy bullets supersonic all the way out past 1,500 yards. Wind drift is less pronounced than the .308, and the Creedmoor generates less recoil. The .264 (6.5 mm) caliber bullets are known as extremely long and sleek projectiles featuring remarkable ballistic coefficients. But lets have a round of applause for our antiquated 220 Swift, just 0.2-inch off the record! By the time the 6.5 Creedmoor started gaining popularity, interest in the .270 WSM was fading. It may be a bit rough on barrels, but this cartridge shoots so flat you probably wont care. Hello there, I think your web site may be having browser compatibility problems. Even though high-BC .30-caliber bullets need to be heavy and pushed hard to shoot flat, many American hunters love them enough to tolerate the recoil. With an Accu-Fit stock and left hand adjustable bolt, this rifle is a perfect choice for anyone! bullet boasts a blistering 3,000-fps muzzle velocity making it a laser beam compared to 2,400fps from its slightly older .17 HMR counterpart. 25-06. Ditto the 6.5 Creedmoor and 6.5-300 Wby. 22 Caliber. Registration on or use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Service. As with Hornadys two recent 6.5 caliber introductions, it has found favor with long-range competitors, but also with hunters who like to hit at distance with heavy bullets. 7) .220 Swift Hornadys Precision Hunter 145-grain ELD-X at 2,950 fps is the flattest-shooting .270 Winchester load. Federals EDGE TLR .270 Winchester is another outstanding option. A 100-grain .243 bullet with a G1 ballistic coefficient around .400 at a muzzle velocity of 2,960 carries just over 800 foot-pounds of energy at 500 yards. Only B.C. Backfire LLC owns and operates this website. ), Remington seems to own the .22-caliber category. So what if we shoot further than 300? The flattest-shooting popular rifle cartridge at 1,000 yards is the 6.5-300 Weatherby Magnum, followed by the .26 Nosler, the .28 Nosler, the .22 Creedmoor, and the 6.5 Weatherby RPM. The 7mm Rem. Most often you just have to buy a Weatherby rifle to get one, and while that used to be an expensive proposition, its not anymore. You still need excellent range finding equipment and preferably have tested drops in your rifle in case your bullets have exaggerated BC claims. Utilizing the heavier, slender and more aerodynamic bullets than the .223 Rem, the Valkyrie best performs outside 500 yards. Subscribe to my channel: http://bit.ly/RonSpomerOutdoorsSubscribeLinks:Website: https://ronspomeroutdoors.com/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ronspomerout. Nevertheless, flat shooting cartridges have long fascinated hunters and driven cartridge development and sales. A long-time favorite of snipers, the .308 Winchester will remain supersonic out to around 1,200 yards. When sighted in 3.9 inches high at 200 yards with that load the 6.5-300 is dead-on at 300 yards and drops just under nine inches at 400 yards. 2023 Backfire LLC, a limited liability company headquartered in Utah, USA. To get started, click the link below to visit mymagnow.com and learn how to access your digital magazine. So, Winchester slightly modified the .270 WSM case so it was a bit shorter and then specified barrels with a faster twist. unfair comparison, Hornady makes a 139 grain BTSP for the 7mm mag very flat shooter, Great info, thanks for your difficult work. bullets at faster speeds allows the projectile to get to the target sooner, minimizing the amount of time all three forces have to affect the bullets trajectory. These are all under my extreme heading, because theyre all brutal on cost and recoil. Run those numbers on JBM. Is flatest of all youve listed. The 6.5 Creedmoor will remain supersonic out to 1,400 yards and is quickly becoming the most popular long-range, big-game cartridge in the world. Nosler Trophy Grade Long Range with a 129-grain AccuBond Long Range bullet at 3,400 fps. I suspect Weatherby got wind of Noslers work on its superb 26 Nosler, so they released Roys old wildcat to steel some of Noslers thunder. Id consider a base of: Among these cartridges, the 25-06 offers the highest MPBR (Mean Point Blank Range) or the max distance that you can adjust a scope to and be +-3 with the most common bullet weights per caliber. The 22 Nosler (the 224V's big bother) will get you ostracized A 20 inch barrel, handloads, and 60/62 grain bullets in the correct twist will also do the job. As the old system for measuring BC, the G1 model is based on a short, flat-bottomed bullet, while the G7 model is based around longer, boat-tailed bullets. These different models rate the aerodynamic qualities of a bullet from which the drag and BC can be measured. It also carries 300 additional foot-pounds of punch at that distance. The new .300 Precision Rifle Cartridge (PRC) use as a parent case a .375 Ruger, which Hornady ballisticians necked-down to .30 caliber and moved back the shoulder to make a cartridge with very long head height. OLIGHT PL-2, PL2, PL II Valkyrie 1200 Lumen Rail Streamlight 69424 TLR-7A Flex 500-Lumen Streamlight 69260 TLR-1 HL 1000-Lumen Weapon Light Streamlight 69400 TLR-7 Sub 500-Lumen Pistol Light OLIGHT Javelot Tac M 1000 Lumens Tactical Streamlight TLR7 Sub VS TLR7A [Side By Side Comparison]. I just wanted to provide you with a quick heads up! That means that its very close to the .243 Winchester in terms of performance on game at most ranges. While that incredibly fast 6.5-300 Wby. Not only are new loads being offered, new ARs and even bolt action rifles for the Grendel are being introduced. If you want to shoot targets out to 1,000 yards or more the Nosler has the goods to get you there. loads. To even things out, Ive zerod all cartridges at 100, drops are listed in feet and cartridges that fell below 1000 ft-lbs didnt get past the next 100 yard clip. I blog often and I truly appreciate your content. Generally, the prevailing opinion is that the G1 model is more accurate when calculating old fashioned, flat base bullets, while the G7 model should work better with the geometry of a modern match style long-range bullets. Hornady's Precision Hunter 145-grain ELD-X at 2,950 fps is the flattest-shooting .270 . Flattest at 1,000 yards Heres where things start to change. Remington officially introduced a .260 Remington in 1997, but we can trace its roots in the wildcat 6.5-08, well-known cartridge in competition circles. However, the .220 Swift and the .22-250 have been used to take deer out to distances a lot of folks got no business shooting, for a long, long time. While heavier bullets at low speed dont shoot as flat, they do carry energy further generally. All Rights Reserved. Tips, techniques, and equipment are applied to these classroom discussions on how to become more proficient and successful at making long-range shots while hunting with AR-platform rifles. Almost 80 years later the company introduced the .270 WSM, which has also been successful, but recently the company unveiled the newest member of its .277-lineup, the 6.8 Western. Great work here. Using the larger .378 Weatherby case, the .338-378 get a 20-percent more case capacity than .338 Lapua and thus gained higher muzzle velocity. Underwood Ammos 110-grain Lehigh Controlled Chaos bullet at 2800 fps is another great option. By the way, while the 6.5-300 has been on the market just five years, Roy was shooting it in the mid-20th century. It's clearly the best varmint cartridge of the new millennium. Equally, cutting through the air slows the projectile down, eating away at its energy. A 3 mph breeze at the shooter can become a 20 mph roar in the canyon halfway to the target. numbers which are not quite as accurate as G7 numbers in predicting trajectories of todays wildly long, sleek bullets. Mag. There are the two most common ballistic standards called the G1 and G7. Love it or hate it, the 6.5 Creedmoor was a game-changer. We look at the cartridg. Product Line: VLD Target. The .300 Win. The sleek and slender spitzer projectiles with higher BC will have a flatter trajectory and be more accurate at distant ranges. That makes it an ideal choice for those who want to hunt large game like elk at extended ranges, but it also makes this a more forgiving cartridge than slower rounds. As for the wind drift, at 200 yards, the .17 WSM has almost reduced in half wind drift compared to the popular .17HMR. Any cartridge that drops less than 40 inches at 500 yards or close to 200 inches at 1000 yards should be considered a flat shooting cartridge. Besides recoil, the downside is the limited availability of factory ammunition and rifles. Recoil is stiff but not at all unmanageable or even unpleasant for experienced shooters. Twenty years ago, Winchester introduced the .270 WSM (Winchester Short Magnum). The 26 Nosler (no decimal point) cartridge was launched at the 2014 SHOT Show as a part of the Noslers new platform rifle, the Patriot. Heck, I cant even find agreement on maximum muzzle velocities in handloading manuals from Speer, Hornady, Nosler, Berger, Swift, Hodgdon, Norma, Sierra, Barnes Furthermore, just because the manual lists those speeds does not mean your rifle will deliver them. I mean, its the flattest shooting cartridge around, but you took a huge bump in recoil over the 300 win mag or even 270 WSM for 41 more usable yards of MPBR. The 6.5 Creedmoor is developed from a .30 Thompson Center (.30 TC) case, which is narrowed down to shoot .264 bullets. Winchester introduced .300 Winchester Magnum in 1963 using the necked down .375 H&H Magnum as a parent case. These cartridges all drop less than 255 at 1,000 yards. He just never made it official. To be fair to the 30-378, itmurders everything else for flatness way out there, staying feet above most other cartridges and carrying enough energy to take a deer at just over 1000 yards. At 500 yards, the 27 Nosler drops almost a foot less than Jack OConnors sacred cartridge. throwing a 55-gr. The .300 PRC is based on the .375 Ruger, and the neck design allows for the use of these heavy bullets. Yep, me too. When youre shooting a .260 Rem loaded with the ultra-streamlined VLD (Very Low Drag) bullets weighing from a 105- to 110-grain, you can quickly gain velocities around 3,000 to 3,100 fps. Every farm kid had a .22 LR (or wanted one). It was introduced by Remington in 1962 to the commercial market in an age of "magnum-mania,". The .30/378 Weatherby. The 55-grain Ballistic Tip at about the same speed is ideal for varmints, coyotes and such. This means we can first determine the fastest cartridge in each caliber, then compare it against the fastest in others. But the PRC also competes well against older .30 caliber rounds, too. But it is also a fact that it can't compete with the modern cartridge ranges designed for flat shooting. Ive hunting in Africa with the 212-grain ELD-X load and found that it performed well on game from 100-pound bushbuck to 400-pound nyala, but the .300 PRC can handle much larger game. And if you want an affordable hunting or target rifle the Creedmoor is a good option. 2023 Outdoor Sportsman Group. Subscriber Services. Released by Hornady in 2007, the Creedmoor didnt initially set the shooting world on fire, but a decade later it was the hottest hunting and shooting cartridge in the world. Bullet Weight: 90 Grain. If you are looking for the flattest shooting caliber to 500 yards, you should read anything else. One of the calibers with the flattest trajectory is the .17 Winchester Super Magnum, a sub-caliber rimfire cartridge. When the .300 Norma Mag launches a 220 grains bullet at 3,200 fps, it will generate a whopping 4,400 ft/lbs of energy. Lots of hunters consider the .270 Winchester one of the best all-purpose, short- and long-range cartridges of all time. The .308 Winchester is a very popular caliber and is . Just saying, excellent job to tell the nature of all calibers for hunting from 100 to 700 yards for medium game. 7 Top Modern Long-Range Cartridges - RifleShooter Barnes Vortex | .300 Winchester Magnum. You may be an outstanding expert rifleman using a match grade ammo. throwing a 55-gr. 7.62x54 ammo might be cheaper . Obviously this list doesnt include every possible bullet/BC/MV combination, but it gives us a pretty good picture of the likely winners at three distances. Traditionally, the 30 caliber rounds are favorite of many hunters and shooters in North America, and Winchester also jumps on the bandwagon with its "Big 30". In comparison to .300 Win Mag factory loads, the 300 PRC ammunition is loaded with either 212gr or 225gr bullets. This modern intermediate rifle cartridge released in 2018 by Federal Premium Ammunition descended from the 6.8 SPC and 100 years old a .30 Remington. The BC calculations are made in relation to the particular standard projectile shapes by measuring how efficiently they overcome air resistance in flight and how well retain velocity and energy as they travel downrange. 10 Best Long-Range Rifle Cartridges Ever Made - Game & Fish One argument for a flat-shooting cartridge is that it covers mistakes. The Amazing 22 Creedmoor: A Wildcat Worth a Hard Look - GunsAmerica Digest The Remington's belted, bottleneck 7mm magnum cartridge is known as "one of the great all-around rifle rounds" due to the vast selection of genuinely outstanding bullets, in weights from 100 to 180+ grains. Mag. Recoil is stiff and some find it hard to master. Know your trajectory curve and nail the shot distance with a range finder and you can offset huge rates of drop. The Nosler AccuBond is one of the best all-round big-game bullets offered, and Weatherby has smarly offered the 140-grain version for their 6.5 RPM cartridge. Faster velocities mean flatter trajectories. Flattest-Shooting Cartridges Ever - YouTube .300 Win. Accordingly, the Weatherby .338-378 can launch any given projectiles weight out the muzzle faster than any other .33-caliber cartridge. It shoots as flat as a Kansas prairie and holds its velocity way out there. However, while the .243 is a catch-all round thats capable of shooting everything from light varmint loads to 100+ grain bullets for deer or distance shooting it wasnt designed specifically as a long-range round. The wise longer range shooter errs on the side of a higher B.C. First, some boundaries. Nor could most of us scrape up a good excuse for owning one. At greater distances the variation in wind drift is even more pronounced. The .224 Valkyrie is the flattest shooting 0.224 caliber cartridge you can put in an AR-15. However, the lead that the 25-06 has is pretty small. Also look at Federal Premiums 180-grain Nosler AccuBond offering at 2,960 fps. What Is the Flattest Shooting Caliber? - MG Arms Inc The reverse, however, could . Now, one manufacturer specializes in fast, powerful, ridiculous cartridges, and thats Weatherby. Originally billed as the world's fastest 30-caliber cartridge, the .30/378 will push a 165-grain bullet close to 3,500 fps. The .17 Winchester Super Magnum 20-gr. Ballistically, the cartridge is very similar to the 6.5 PRC, but unlike the PRC it uses a standard 0.473 rim diameter like the .308 Winchester. But it's so close to the 6.5-300 Wby. What It Is Not. 6.5mm and 7mm projectiles offer very high ballistic coefficients, meaning they offer excellent ability to overcome drag and wind deflection over longer distances. But to do this, it must launch a heavy bullet and that means recoil can be stiff; from an 8-pound rifle, it generates more than 33 foot-pounds of recoil, which is more than twice that of the 6.5 Creedmoor. Instead of three digits in the caliber (0.264") of the bullets, the name 26 Nosler refers to the first two digits. The .22 Winchester Magnum Rimfire, commonly known as the "Twenty-Two Win Mag," was hatched back in 1959. Although the .25-caliber bullets belong to a lighter category, they typically have high ballistic coefficients resulting in a perfect wind bucking ability as well as retaining kinetic energy down-range. It's not as popular among match shooters as the .308 or a number of other lesser-known cartridges, but it's effective, nonetheless. The main reasons are very flat trajectory coupled with a supersonic speed out beyond 1,650 yards. With a recent elevated popularity, due in no small part to the rise of the six-fives, the Grendel is now getting the attention it deserves. Both cartridges have been designed as the long-range busters. So far, I've listed cartridges . Meantime, lets enjoy our deeper dive into flat shooting hunting cartridges (hand carried and shoulder fired. The 6.5300 Weatherby magnum, as its name suggests, is based on the 300 Weatherby mag and has a case capacity of 98 grains of water. Its .224-diameter bullet with ridiculously high Ballistic Coefficient (BC) number can maintain supersonic speed and drift less in the wind right up until about the 1,300-yard mark. One of the calibers with the flattest trajectory is the .17 Winchester Super Magnum, a sub-caliber rimfire cartridge. All RifleShooter subscribers now have digital access to their magazine content. With a recoil of 16.3 ft/lbs, the .270 Winchester 46'' impact range at a 500-yard drop. But the PRC uses a larger case thats based on the .300 Ruger Compact Magnum instead of the .30 TC case that spawned the 6.5 Creedmoor, and the PRC therefore has a higher powder capacity. RifleShooter Magazine editor Scott Rupp breaks down all the features of the Mossberg Patriot Predator rifle chambered in 6.5 PRC. Be aware that many of these bullets could have been target bullets. How about our drops on the cartridges that made it? The result is that the 6.5 PRC drives those same bullets about 250 feet-per-second faster than the Creedmoor, and that equates to more energy and a flatter trajectory. 98". However, the match-grade ammunition would give the best result if fired from a match-grade rifle purpose-built from the start for the long-range precision shooting. bullet faster than did the larger volume 30-378 Wby. As an excellent 1,000-yard cartridge with low wind drift and super-flat/straight trajectory, the two-sixty flies faster over longer distances. Considered by many to be the optimum long-range, large-game cartridge, the .300 Winchester Magnum has proven itself worldwide. With todays ammunition, its even better. bullet twice that far. All the following data was computer generated as if all loads were fired from a (simulated) dead flat (level) barrel, so these are pure drops. Your email address will not be published. In the shortest terms, you can conceive 7mm Remington Magnum as flat- shooting .270 and hard-hitting .30-06 round. bullet to offset wind deflection. It outperforms the .280 Remington (also known as the 7mm-06 and the 7mm Express), and for years wildcatters and handloaders have been singing its praises. Prairie dogs?). 4. When the .264 Winchester Magnum was introduced about 60 years ago, it became a sensation with shooters looking to extend their reach in the field. Time of flight impacts bullet drop more than anything else. The Creedmoor carries more velocity and energy downrange with less recoil than any other factory cartridge. For example, the .50BMG and the 6.5 Creedmoor both launch bullets at approximately the same muzzle velocity of 2,700fps. The cartridge headspaces off its 30-degree shoulder, and since Hornady has designed cartridge drawing with tight tolerances accuracy is extremely good. 30-06 case and plethora of bullet weights ranging from 75 to 120 grains, the .25-06 provides excellent ballistics and trajectory for the small game up for the deer-sized game. This excellent .25-caliber round was the first wildcat to have been based on the .30-06 Springfield cartridge preceding the development of much more popular the .270 Win round. The .270 Winchester stays supersonic out to 1,400 yards, which is more than what 99 percent of hunters will ever need. 270. The caveat here is that fastest becomes a bit murky. Handgun Caliber Comparison [2022 Guide] - Reload Your Gear It has flipped positions with the 6.5, losing by a mere 1.4-inches. 6.5mm calibers These cartridges all drop less than 255 at 1,000 yards. So if you take flat shooting to mean aiming right at something far away and hitting it, theres not really enough difference between the main popular cartridges to get out of bed for. In fact, we may say that its the only thing that matters; however, factors that lead to time of flight changes are important to consider.