People have too many false beliefs not founded in fact about a good many things relating to rifles and cartridges.
1) Short Actions are not more accurate than long actions and no research empirical scientific research shows that they are.
2) No real measurements of stiffness behind the the front portion of the action have been done.
3) No science of any kind has ever demonstrated that anything aft of the locking lugs on an action with front locking lugs and more than one lug matters. Remember we are not hanging a heavy load pressing down on the front and rear of the action.
4) No one has demonstrated that short action magnums offer anything over standard length or magnum length cartridges when talking about long range hunting.
5) While short fat powder columns are all the rage I have not seen anything like research demonstrating the advantage at best we have speculation based on people winning or losing in competition nothing remotely like a double blind study with only a single variable. The data pools are so small that they are only relevant to the person that generate the data point and no one else because the pool is too small to be statistically significant.
6) It is not wise to attempt to build any 6.5mm using VLD's on a short action if you truly want accuracy, precision and magnum level performance.
7) No one has yet to make a sound argument for short actions with 6.5mm "magnums" performance cartridges or demonstrated that they these new cartridges do anything statically significant over far older cartridges in a hunting situation!
The most telling thing though is that Armies have deep pockets and the US Army, Navy and Marine Corp which is part of the Navy have all decided to go with Mk 248 Mod 1 over anything else to kill people at long ranges instead of 338LM or 7mm Remington Mag or some new fangle 6.5mm. It is not like they needed to stick with something from 1968 they just thought it made sense. On top of that in the case of the US Army all of their bolt action rifles are long action so OAL of the magazine boc was not an issue and they could of accommodated a lot of other cartridges. The brass, powder and bullet weight are not at all common with anything in inventory so no gain there. Who would chose a belted cartridge unless it made logistical sense and was mission ready. I have to admit I would like to head-space off the shoulder instead of a belt. No one on this sight wants to hear that though so in one ear and out the other. The supply chain could have supported anything they decided to go with.
All these new cartridges using proprietary brass are freq. sold out of stock. I seldom have a hard time getting 300 Win Mag, 30-06 SPRG, 308 Win, 243 Win, 7mm Rem Mag, 300 Weatherby, 8mm Mauser, 7mm Mauser, 6.5x55 brass. I do have a hard time getting 45-70 brass at times.I can also find those at my local Walmart or Meijers if I ever needed to buy factory ammo. Likewise any brass for cartridges used in F-Open can be hard to get at times which again makes them bad for hunting if you can not easily get the brass or loaded ammo any place in N.America, S. America, Africa, Western Europe, Central Europe or Eastern Europe. In fact every time I am tempted to build a 9.3x62 rifle I tell myself no since the ammo and brass are not the easiest to find in N. America and bullet selection sucks in America too. If I ever go back to Africa I will definitely build one but other wise it is just silly. The little German boy in me thinks a 9.3mm is romantic but the American in me thinks it is silly!
#1 Who cares, use the action for the cartridge, short actions are nice to shave a little weight in ultralight builds.
#2 There has been a study done, I'm trying to remember the name of the book. There has also been many, many tests done from softening to hardening actions for accuracy but it's small groups of guys testing things not big published reports.
#3 Absolutely wrong, anything that causes your bolt to jump or firing pin to drag, weak spring, short drop, TRIGGER function also a biggie!!
#4 You can cut that both ways, I run both and use less powder to go faster with the shorties, one thing that is nice is that you can get into a different burn rate powder and can run a heavier bullet with better powders sometimes with a short version of a long action chambering. There is really nothing that says the long is better than the shorter and vice versa. Use the one that fits your build!
#5 It's pretty much universally known that a short fat powder column is more efficient and shooting smaller at distance than long powder column chambering, hardly a small pool of evidence, a 300 Win will not agg over thousands of rounds with a 300 WSM, a 243 won't agg with a 6 Dasher over thousands of rounds, there is literally ZERO long case accuracy cartridges in use, has nothing to do with anything but shooting small!!
#6 That's just willful ignorance, we do it all the time!! Is no harder than a long action, they run into the same things!!
#7 Who cares, again it's fun to shoot something new to see what you can bring out of it, one thing you'll see from these short 6.5 Mags is they can run at speed in shorter barrels using a wider range of powders, is that an advantage, depends on what your criteria is, some need way more to change than other.
Doing something because the Government does it hardly makes sense, it's extremely difficult and expensive to change anything over, the 300 Win is working but obviously not well enough that there isn't a huge push for better longer range 30 cals hence the DoD picking up the 300 PRC which has been shooting better at ELR and will drop right into the rifles already being used with better bullet seating and more velocity.
Every new cartridge in history had a brass problem from the start, the 300 Win didn't have a dozen options right out of the gate, some of these newer ones are actually getting better brass faster than the oldie but goodies, they are out of stock because so many guys want to try them and actually shoot them to see if they offer anything VS using the internet for their facts, yep there are guys who just need the new thing, it's the same thing every time something comes along. Unit the last 30 years the 300 Win was just ignorant over kill around here, the ONLY guys I know who shooting them for elk around here were from out of state, all you needed was an 06 don't need a new fangle magnum!
Cartridge design is very much an evolution, survival of the fittest, new cases based on older ones, it's natural and awesome. Has no bearing on how much we can do and enjoy the older designs.
The first guy at least used some real stuff and was a decent watch though basic and he's right, if your wanting a mile cartridge a 6.5 sucks in some ways, it's way funner to do than my 28 which is boring to shoot at a mile but why would that even be an issue, I don't know anyone who does not have enough grasp on ballistics to realize this. For a real fun time I really enjoy shooting my 308 with 215 Bergers at a mile, it make a guy laugh to shoot load and watch your first hit or if you shoot fast have two bullets in the air at the same time. It's all about having fun shooting what you want at the level you want, if you killing stuff there's a lot of ways to skin that cat too as long as the nut behind the trigger is getting it done well more power to him.
