CARTRIDGE FIRST. ALWAYS.

I was lying prone in the Oregon desert, having just broken the trigger of the Ruger rifle and watching the vapor trail of the Hornady A-Tip bullet through the Leupold Mark 5 riflescope, when the air in front of the target started to distort, and I saw the impact on the left quarter of the steel plate 1,500 yards away. In spite of the three aforementioned pieces of excellent gear, my mind wandered to the cartridge—one of the first of the revisionist cartridges, the 6.5 Creedmoor.

Now, before you turn the page, this article is not focused on the Creedmoor; instead, it’s about the concept it embraces. We’ve discovered that the high-BC bullets, which retain their energy so well at longer ranges, are key to hitting a target at extremely long ranges and that the biggest, most voluminous cartridges might not play such an important role.

But, the cartridge must have the proper geometry to harbor those long bullets that do the job so well. I used the phrase, “revisionist cartridge,” earlier. By that, I mean those newer designs that have sacrificed case length and/or capacity