Ammunition Shootout

Good Loads for the 6.5 and 308

When a rifle is reviewed in a gun magazine it’s commonly tested with a variety of ammunition. However, when there’s an article about a new ammunition offering from a manufacturer, it’s typically only tested in one rifle. This can provide some meaningful information, but in terms of precision all you really know is how well that load shot in that rifle.

This is one of the problems that those like me who write about new ammunition face. Most often when sampling a new load we’re provided a limited amount of ammo to shoot. This creates a testing conundrum; do you shoot it all a lot in one gun, or a little bit in several guns? When working with a limited supply I tend to test the ammo in a gun I’m familiar with and no what to expect from. Ideally, experimentation with new ammunition should include multiple firearms, but there’s rarely enough ammunition to make this feasible.

During the 2023 Field & Stream Rifle Test I had the opportunity to test a verity of 6.5 Creedmoor and 308 Winchester loads in several rifles, and I had a lot of ammunition to work with. You can read all about the rifles HERE, but what was excluded from the article was how well these various factory loads performed, individually. For most hunters, especially those who are not in the market for a new rifle, that might have been the most important take-a-way from all the testing that was conducted.