Looking rifle cartridges are available in waves. When my grandfather acquired out of the Military within the Nineteen Fifties, navy cartridges like .30-06 and 8mm Mauser dominated the woods. World Warfare II and Korean Warfare veterans knew firsthand about their potential, and there have been loads of low-cost surplus sporter rifles available on the market.
Subsequent got here the magnum craze of the mid-Twentieth century. Hunters wished huge cartridges that shot flat and hit exhausting. This reached its peak within the Nineteen Seventies, when hunters began to recollect how a lot much less it damage to shoot a .270 Winchester than a .338 Winchester Magnum, however continued considerably into the Nineteen Nineties with true beasts just like the .300 RUM and .30-378 Weatherby Magnum.
After a brief affair with quick mags across the millennium, hunters have been hit with one other wave within the 2010s and 20s: lengthy vary. This newest development has taken maintain, and with it, an obsession with ballistic coefficients, ogives, and Information on Earlier Engagements (DOPE). We went from being macho magnum shooters to quantity crunchers on calculators.
Regardless of the nerdiness of the long-range craze, it feels as if we’ve someway circled again to magnums. I’m speaking concerning the 6.5 PRC, 7mm PRC, and .300 PRC. All of them have greater case capacities, they usually maintain about the identical quantity of energy as standbys just like the .300 Win. Magazine. and 7mm Rem Magazine.
With related bullet diameters as these outdated magnums, it leads one to ask, what’s the large deal? Are these cartridges simply magnums with a contemporary coat of selling paint, or are they really one thing new? If you happen to’ve questioned this or are a brand new .300 PRC proprietor who places up with questions like that at deer camp (however you don’t know find out how to reply), you’ve come to the precise place.
The Magnum Period: Pace Kills
To wrap our heads round this, it helps to grasp what basic magnums just like the .300 Win. Magazine. provide hunters. It’s straightforward to assume these greater cartridges are designed for greater recreation, however trajectory, not essentially vitality, is the place magnums actually shine.
Most conventional magnum cartridges come from the .375 H&H’s belted case. They’re basically necked-down variations of the basic dangerous-game cartridge. If you scale back the neck diameter of a cartridge, you typically get extra velocity, and with that, a flatter trajectory.
Earlier than calculators or dialing turrets, trajectory was king. By zeroing excessive (utilizing a Most Level Clean Vary Zero) with a typical deer searching cartridge like a .30-06, you may maintain useless on a deer’s important zone and make an moral shot out to distances between 200 and 300 yards. With high-velocity magnums, you may push that past 300 yards, and by holding just a little excessive, you may stretch issues out to round 400 with out dialing a turret or calculating trajectory within the area. It’s extremely efficient with rudimentary optics and an enormous motive why hunters again then cared about laser-flat trajectory.
The Trendy Shift: Heavy Bullets and Wind
When the 6.5 Creedmoor took maintain, folks began getting increasingly into long-range goal video games like PRS. By then, we’d realized extra about bullet aerodynamics, and the 6.5 Creedmoor takes benefit of that with an extended, extra environment friendly bullet and quick twist price.
Laser rangefinders, ballistic calculators, and dialing turrets additionally made it simpler to shoot cartridges with arcing trajectories at lengthy vary. Many deserted the high-zero and holdovers from earlier than and switched to a 100-yard zero and a DOPE card. This tech additionally helped those that wished to shoot at a distance keep away from nasty magnum recoil and barrel burn.
Trajectory issues much less now, however there was nonetheless an equalizer, particularly for long-range goal shooters: the wind.
Though we will plot bullet drop exactly, the wind will blow your shot astray. You possibly can’t beat the wind, however you may reduce by way of it extra effectively with longer, heavier, excessive ballistic coefficient bullets. To shoot these bullets to their full potential and achieve an edge in competitors, you want extra powder, which is why it appears we’re again to the magnum. However there are some variations between newer “magnums” and the outdated ones.
The Refined However Necessary Variations Between a PRC and a Magnum
To place it merely, basic magnum cartridges can shoot lengthy, heavy bullets, however they suck at it for 2 causes. The primary is case design. To seat a 220-grain projectile in a .300 Win. Magazine., it’s essential seat it down into the powder cost. This complicates issues, will finally injury the case, and provides you much less room for powder.
The second is the twist price of the barrel. Older magnums have slower twist charges that may’t stabilize lengthy, high-BC bullets of in the present day. You possibly can construct a {custom} .300 Win. Magazine. with a sooner twist, however you’ll save about $2,000 and a bunch of hand-loading complications in case you simply purchase a rifle chambered for a cartridge that ends within the letters PRC.
The shorter case of a PRC helps you to seat a protracted bullet for optimum effectivity. It’s fatter than a .375 H&H case, too, so that you don’t lose out on powder. Chamber throats are additionally reduce to tighter tolerances for the PRCs. In conventional magnums, chamber throats are reduce just a little over caliber to permit for inconsistencies between ammo producers. On a PRC, they often virtually match the bullet’s caliber.
On a ballistics desk, there isn’t a lot distinction between, say, a .300 Win. Magazine. and a .300 PRC taking pictures the identical bullet, however the PRC can shoot lengthy, heavy bullets extra exactly. The factor is, although, it actually isn’t till you begin getting out into actually lengthy vary that the PRCs provide you with a big edge. That’s as a result of PRCs are technically designed for goal shooters.
Ought to You Commerce Your Magnum for a PRC?
The declare of the PRC is that it’s going to carry out higher at lengthy vary. That declare may be very true. For hunters, although, lengthy vary won’t be so lengthy.
Goal shooters eyeing up a 6.5, 7mm, or .300 PRC are fascinated about how all of these small variations above will add as much as actual efficiency at distances properly past 700 and even 1,000 yards. For instance, at and past 1000 yards, you’ll see round 10 inches much less wind drift with a 7mm or .300 PRC (in a ten mph crosswind) than you’d with a comparable magnum. Most hunters don’t take pictures that far, although, for lots of excellent causes which were defined and debated advert nauseam everywhere in the Web.
When searching at distances round or beneath 500 yards, the basic magnums have most PRC masses beat. There’s a slight upside to a PRC on paper, however ammo and rifles are cheaper and simpler to seek out for conventional magnums; they carry out on recreation animals nearly the identical, they buck the wind simply advantageous (as a result of wind issues much less at 300 yards than at 1,000), they usually’re simpler to place in additional rifle actions.
You would possibly see a couple of extra fps and an inch or two much less drop/wind deflection from a .300 PRC in comparison with a .300 Win. Magazine. at sensible searching distances, however you’re actually splitting hairs. If you wish to decide a mule deer off a mountain a mile away, purchase a PRC. However in case you shoot huge recreation at sane distances, my recommendation can be to purchase a magnum.
With that stated, the PRC cartridges aren’t all advertising and marketing hype. They’ll nonetheless hunt, they usually hunt very properly. The 6.5 PRC particularly makes an distinctive searching cartridge for these dissatisfied with 6.5 Creedmoor. I like to think about the PRCs as extremely versatile, letting you might have one gun for searching and taking pictures matches. And in case you hunt in a spot the place lengthy pictures are frequent, long-range taking pictures matches are very useful.
Though you won’t shoot recreation at 1,000 yards, taking pictures a match stuffed with 1,000-yard targets makes 500-yard pictures on animals a lot simpler. A rifle chambered in 6.5, 7mm, or .300 PRC would make the right crossover gun to go between the sector and the match. Additionally they make custom-gun-quality efficiency and accuracy extra attainable. For that, I’d say they fall in a camp all their very own.
