I don't think that people hate the 6.5 Creedmoor, what's not to like about have the best bullets, brass and really good rifle, and all the work already done for you. The support from the manufactures is unrivaled, there is no hating that. Being jealous of it maybe, but not hating. I think that the hating comes from seeing a group that thinks that they are smarter and better shooters just be cause they bought a Creedmoor. Someone that used to post here said he ordered a 6.5 Creedmoor for a customer. When the customer came to pick up the rifle the customer told the shop owner "you will never win the local 600yd match again now that I own this rifle". The shop owner took his 223 bolt action to the next match and won yet again. The product is top shelf, the attitude of some of the owners is almost like going to the democratic convention with a MAGA hat. The shooting world was a friendlier place before the Creedmoor.
6.5mm...
- Thread starter IdahoSharpshooter
- Start date
To me the preference of the Creedmore over the 260 or any other .264 Cal rounds is marketing. I personally think a 140grn Or most any other bullet weight of good quality bullets, wheather or not it is a Berger, Seirra, Lapua or what ever it is, coming out of a good barrel at 2750~ 2875 is all on equal footing. This on going BS between the two is all personal preference, and Ego.
Warren Dean
Team Savage F-TR
STOMP442
Gold $$ Contributor
98% of the Creedmoors success is marketing. Hornady is very good at making things look "really cool" with their packaging and advertising. Any serious shooter that has half a brain that knew about the .260 Remington knows that the Creedmoor really offers nothing new or exciting ballistically speaking. But the Tacticool under 30 crowd have never even heard of the .260 for the most part and when they go to the gun store they see an ugly green and yellow box stamped .260 Rem Core Lokt next to a shiney red box with silver lettering and a hot rod engine strapped to a bullet case that says 6.5 Creedmoor Superformance. Same can be said with their reloading components and dies. Looks real good on the shelf and the average consumers says "dang that stuffs in a fancy box it must be better than the rest."
Boyd L.
Witty comment under development
I fail to see why anyone should be convinced to the infallibility or benefit of one cartridge over another. Either the cartridge meets your needs or it doesn't. Shoot what your resources and desire will allow. That's why I own a .22 Hornet on a Miroku Browning Low Wall, for those charging squirrels during safari.
I was looking at getting a 260. My load manual has the creed and 260 as about equal with a slight edge to the creed in velocity for the bullets I’m likely to use.
In availability the Creed has it all over the 260. I ended up getting the Creed because the rifle I ended up getting on sale is not offered in 260 only the Creedmoor.
I don’t use it for hunting, I only use it for target/fun shooting but for that purpose it is really fine. Perfectly happy with it.
In availability the Creed has it all over the 260. I ended up getting the Creed because the rifle I ended up getting on sale is not offered in 260 only the Creedmoor.
I don’t use it for hunting, I only use it for target/fun shooting but for that purpose it is really fine. Perfectly happy with it.
.260 you can't load 140 ish grain bullets with the boat tail above the neck shoulder and feed in a standard short action magazine. The bullet ends up jammed down in the space you really want for powder. That is where the 6.5 x 47 and 6.5CM have an advantage.
There are ways around it. Tikka makes a medium length mag that gets you extra length. The Berger 130 gr AR hybrid is a short bullet and is ideal for a .260. I am a .260 fan, myself.
There are ways around it. Tikka makes a medium length mag that gets you extra length. The Berger 130 gr AR hybrid is a short bullet and is ideal for a .260. I am a .260 fan, myself.
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The 260 Remington was supposed to get us a 6.5 in a short action when they necked down the 308. But you still couldn't fit a 155 SMK into it in a short action without a lot of it being in the case. Might as well stick with the 6.5 Swede, especially since their 260 Remington SAMMI spec is still for a 1-9 twist.
Remington only recently started offering their 260 rifles with a twist that can stabilize a 142 SMK. They still haven't figured out that we shoot 80 grain bullets in the 223 Remington, or they'd offer rifles with 1-7 or 1-8 twist.
If by marketing, people mean understanding what consumers are doing in the company's targeted market space, then yeah Hornady and Ruger are kicking ass, *Savage too. They all own the entry level competition.
Remington only recently started offering their 260 rifles with a twist that can stabilize a 142 SMK. They still haven't figured out that we shoot 80 grain bullets in the 223 Remington, or they'd offer rifles with 1-7 or 1-8 twist.
If by marketing, people mean understanding what consumers are doing in the company's targeted market space, then yeah Hornady and Ruger are kicking ass, *Savage too. They all own the entry level competition.
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I suppose that you realize that there is Hornady 260 Remington Superformance ammo also. I think in the same box as you posted a picture of.
Al Lu
Gold $$ Contributor
"I am unable to understand why the Creedmoor is preferable to a regular 260 Remington.
Someone, please enlighten me, with hard data." It has nothing to do with hard facts.
Let me explain how in my case I got to be 6.5Creedmoor shooter and maybe you might understand in one instance why 6.5 Creed is so successful for me. Because of life and family obligations, I did not touch a rifle for half a century? Everyone advise me to get a .308 WIN as first rifle which I did. After shooting 25-50 rounds my tired shoulder was bruised (my ego more when my sons tease)? As this was a hunting rifle, I wanted a range rifle that was comparable to .308 WIN but enjoy shooting without worrying about the recoil! 6.5 Creed was my answer. Because of shooting more at the range, I learn marksmanship skills and recoil management and can handle the .308 WIN all day without flinching and no bruise! In fact the 6.5mm Creed has push me to get others (6.5x47 L) and into hand loading!
The 6.5Creed is growing the shooting sport and it is more economical and available than 260 Remington? The facts that shooting Creedmoor from price, budget, checks all the squares is a bonus. This is just one example but in the end, people speaks with their "hard earned Cash".
Someone, please enlighten me, with hard data." It has nothing to do with hard facts.
Let me explain how in my case I got to be 6.5Creedmoor shooter and maybe you might understand in one instance why 6.5 Creed is so successful for me. Because of life and family obligations, I did not touch a rifle for half a century? Everyone advise me to get a .308 WIN as first rifle which I did. After shooting 25-50 rounds my tired shoulder was bruised (my ego more when my sons tease)? As this was a hunting rifle, I wanted a range rifle that was comparable to .308 WIN but enjoy shooting without worrying about the recoil! 6.5 Creed was my answer. Because of shooting more at the range, I learn marksmanship skills and recoil management and can handle the .308 WIN all day without flinching and no bruise! In fact the 6.5mm Creed has push me to get others (6.5x47 L) and into hand loading!
The 6.5Creed is growing the shooting sport and it is more economical and available than 260 Remington? The facts that shooting Creedmoor from price, budget, checks all the squares is a bonus. This is just one example but in the end, people speaks with their "hard earned Cash".
I'd disagree with that. If you've followed 6mmBR.com / Accurateshooter as long as I have and read posts on blogs on Snipers Hide and similar, you'll know that the 260 / 260AI were the cartridges for Tactical / sniper comps some years back. As an example:
https://www.accurateshooter.com/guns-of-week/gunweek046/
I can't see a date, but from the references to championship wins, it appears to be the 2004-2010 period. Did Remington capitalise on its users' such as Terry Cross's successes? - not at all as far as I could ever see. AFAIK, Remington has never made match cartridges and sees the 260 as light/medium deer cartridge for the little Model 7 and suchlike having failed to excite the LE community in trying it back in the 90s. Specialist manufacturers such as ABM, Prime Ammo and HSM have been left to load high quality match bullet ammo for those competitors who don't handload. The final straw for many former 260 Rem sniper / tactical comp shooters was the great ammo and components shortage of a few years ago when Remington allegedly stopped production of 260 unprimed brass for two or more years. As barrels were replaced the chamberings specified were 6.5X47L and 6.5 Creedmoor.
Where I live (the UK) the Stalking Forum (ie our deerhunters' forum) used to regularly have pleas for information on availability / stock of factory 260 Rem deer ammo in our gunshops. When found, prices were frankly eye watering! Now in 2019, 260 is hardly ever mentioned here even among deerhunters, all the interest being in 6.5X55mm, 6.5X47mm Lapua (very, very popular in the UK as long as you handload) and more recently the Creedmoor.
(Ironically, my own 6.5mm range rifles are chambered for 6.5 Grendel, 260 Rem and 6.5X55mm. Having tried 6.5X47 and Creedmoor, they're fine but simply didn't excite me.)
So true! Read any of the standard textbooks on marketing theory and practice and their introductory sections nearly always say that marketing is not about advertising / publicity - that's only one part of the 'marketing mix' and anyway sometimes word of mouth - or in this day and age positive mentions on social media and specialist blogs - amongst consumers is the best form of 'marketing communication'.
The basis of successful marketing is succeeding in getting the 'Four Ps' right. ie:
The Right Product .... at
The Right Price ........
Adequately Promoted to the target market or market segments ........... and
in the Right Place (ie sufficient supplies manufactured and correctly distributed so that products are available to consumers and in the case of 6.5CM ammunition getting Ruger, Savage, PT&G and several custom rifle builders on board so that were firearms available to use the cartridge in from day one).
STOMP442
Gold $$ Contributor
Yes I know, but not until just a few years ago. My point is that the Creedmoor has a much bigger shelf presence than anything the .260 has. Looking at Hornady alone they offer 11 factory load options for the 6.5 Creed while only 2 for the .260 Remington. Looking at the big four; Winchester, Remington, Hornady and Nosler that number moves to 17 to 10. Every time I go to Sportsmans warehouse or Basspro I can see a box of the .260 Core Lockt and maybe the Nosler while I will see an entire section devoted to the Creed. A lot of that has to do with the failures of Remington for sure but I still don't think they had to re-invent the wheel with the Creed. They probably could have simply started marketing the .260 Rem and had the same great successes they are seeing now. If the .260 had two or three articles in every issue of every shooting or gun magazine month in and month out it would be vastly more popular than it is.
Once a product has the stink of failure on it it's very difficult to revive it with just advertising dollars alone, there has to be a compelling reason for people to want to revisit it. Generally it's better to start fresh with a clean slate. The 260 didn't take off the first time because few people wanted it, throwing good money after bad trying to get it back going again wasn't the solution. The "solution" so to speak is was what Hornady did, they designed a cartridge that people want. Give people what they want and they'll buy it.
Success breeds success, that's what you're seeing now in 2019. The Creedmoor didn't start off in 2008 with 17 factory ammo offerings and whole sections at Bass Pro devoted to it, it started with a few offerings but steady increases in sales over the years is what lead to devoted sections to in the stores. The reason why you continue to see multiple articles in every magazine a decade after it was introduced is because of reader demand and strong sales year after year.
I work for a large very successful retail company at the moment and believe me, everything is sales driven. Shelf space is prime real estate, if there's only one position for 260 Core Lokts on the shelf, it's because sales don't justify more space than that. If there's an entire section for the Creedmoor, it's because sales justify that too. The buyers don't care which round came out first, or ballistics, or any of the other crap we argue about, they look at what sells and what doesn't and the market has spoken loud and clear what they want to buy.
Spoken as life really is out there. It's a hard, hard world in consumer goods marketing and retail. I still find some of this anti-Creedmoor resentment in the US very strange though. As a Brit I was brought up to believe 'Americans love winners'. Apparently not in cartridges!
STOMP442
Gold $$ Contributor
Just to be clear, I don't hate the Creedmoor. I own one, and it's a great cartridge, it really is. I am a huge 6.5 guy and have been for a long time. I have been pushing the merits of the 6.5 long before the Creedmoor ever showed up and I guess thats what bothers me the most about it. The thing that gets me is how 95% of Creedmoor shooters claim its the best thing since sliced bread and in reality, it really doesn't do anything different or better than others before it.
.............. as long as they're happy. If I were Hornady / Ruger / Savage and the host of other companies making products, sales and profits on the back of the Creedmoor (not to mention retailers), I'd be delighted with this feedback. A satisfied customer returns and buys again and whilst maybe boring his range-house companions with OTT eulogies also probably persuades some more people to try it when they buy new rifles.
I know the feeling though. Years back I had a 'bitzer' F-Class rifle in 300 H&H Magnum with a 30-inch barrel and was exasperated by a jumped-up know-it-all who assured me that his 24-inch barrel Tikka chambered for the then new 300WSM would outperform my old-fashioned H&H 'because it's a more efficient cartridge'. (Actually they have identical case capacities, are both allowed 65,000 psi MAP and give near identical performance in same pressure loadings and barrel lengths even if the 100 year old H&H looks very dated now.
The ironic part of this to me is that before the 6.5CM came out I remember getting hassled the same way about being a 260 shooter. Guys would say it can't do anything that the 6.5 Swede can't do, Remington's 100 yrs late to the party, etc. Sometimes I think people get emotionally attached to different rounds and don't like to see something new on the market to compete with it.
It seems to me the basic argument people are making, "the creedmoor can't do anything the 260 can't do", is a decade too late. That made sense when the CM first came out but at this point the CM is far and away the dominant player. I was at a large outdoor store yesterday and there were zero 260 rifles for sale and only one ammo choice compared to probably a dozen different Creedmoor rifles and a variety of ammo choices. Customers now have to be asking themselves the opposite question, "what does the 260 do the Creedmoor doesn't?" If there's almost no new off the shelf rifles available and few choices for ammo, an extra 50fps? isn't a compelling enough reason I wouldn't think for the nonreloading shooter (most shooters) to go with the 260 in large numbers.
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