500-1000m hunting/target round, only 2 choices...
 

.260 Remington or 7mm-08 ?

Please tell us your opinion on the better long-distance hunting (500-750 meters) and target (600-1000m) projectile.

I hand-load, and want a .308-based cartridge. Don't ask, I just do... :)

And I only ask for opinions on the 2 choices, no "such-n-such caliber would be my choice" please.

*edit - I missed the poll button before I clicked "post"...

:sSc_hiding:

I'd take the 7-08
Have a read on the New 7 thread , lots of good info

That's a hard one as I like them both thinking I would lean 260

What would make you lean that way?
7 having heavier bullets with better BC ,
Wouldn't that help with wind drift at that distances ?

Out of your two choices op I would go with a 260 with an 8 twist or faster barrel in a rifle where you can seat those slippery 142 grain bullets long. A 142 grain accubond long range @ 2800 should be plenty.

As a comparison the 6.5 140g and 7mm 168g have roughly the same BC but in the 260 you can launch it at least a 100fps faster than te 7-08 with 168g so the 260 has the advantage and as you go heavier in the 7mm your velocity loss starts to really trump your BC gain IMHO and also i have use both and while both are good choices I would choose te 260

It's really tough to beat a 139 scenar on paper and game combined.

Both are excellent choices. I was in an identical position a couple of years ago, deciding between the .260 and 7-08. Both have pros and cons, here are just a few:

.260
- slightly less demanding COAL requirements for building or buying a S/A
- slightly less recoil
- smaller caliber bullets are usually cheaper than bigger bullets

7-08
- slightly better barrel life
- better availability of great bullets
- heavier bullets available for shooting large critters at distance (although both are perfectly capable, I'd give the 7-08 a slight advantage here)

In the end, performance on target and on game is nearly a wash, but in this case I chose the 7-08 simply because I have a much easier time finding good, slippery 7mm bullets than I do 6.5mm. When you go through a lot of them in practice, which you should if you're shooting game at distance, then sourcing them becomes a serious consideration.

These are excellent responses.

Thanks, and keep 'em coming !

This makes sense to me, most guys launching 160gr and heavier bullets aren't doing it from a 7-08 there using the larger cases. A good 160gr 7mm bullet at 3000fps is a wonderful all round Alberta game getter IMO.
Lots are using short action 6.5's of some sort and getting it done consistently on paper and flesh, them bullets just keep on going it seems.
I have a 7-08 with about 30rounds down the pipe that sits in the corner and often grab one of the three 260's when I want some trigger time or some meat.

The 6.5 bullets have long been I preferential to the 7's to 300 meters and beyond for a very long time , the first time I ran into this I was very young and was watching my father make 6mm International cartridges for his 300 meter Free rifle .

He explained to me that the Europeans were kicking our butts in 300 meter Free rifle competition because we didn't have a decent 6.5 match bullet and cartridge on the North American market , Because the public wouldn't buy them- the 308 was the best choice for recoil and accuracy .

The 7's eventually got popular as did the 6.5's , but it took the silhouette craze to change that .
For me , it would be a smaller case with a 6.5 bullet unless I was planning to hunt with it as well, then I would go to a larger case .
Competing and informal target shooting are two different things for me, and superiority fir hunting would be the more important equation here for me.
Cat

260Rem
Good brass from Lapua
6.5 Bullets have a good BC
Less recoil

but 260 is boring, All the cool kids are shooting 6.5x47L lol (I had too)

7-08 is now a lapua brass offering as well

Out of the 2, I'd pick the 260. For the same bolt face and almost the same case, I'd go with the 6.5 creedmore.

260 rem shooting the new 155 berger

I would go with a 260AI.

Thanks for the info, I did not know that

I have both the 260 and 7-08 in the AI variants. Both are awesome cartridges but as noted above the 260 has the better bullets until you get up in weight in the 7mm. Then the velocity suffers. However both shoot 130 to 143 bullets exceptionally well to the ranges you have chosen.

I'm shooting the 162AM with a 0.625G1/0.307G7 BC at 2735fps from a pair of SAAMI 7-08's. It's a fairly wicked combo that holds velocity just fine. The AI version would add 100 fps. 2700-2850 fps ain't no slouch ;) You've gotta see it to believe how well that bullet plows through moose and elk...

The .260/140 and the 7-08/162 both drive to pretty darn close to 2750 fps. Neither is a bad place to be, so I'm not sure what all the chatter is about saying the 7-08 suffers in the velocity department with bullets of decent BC. A guy could even step down to a 150 like the LRAB or Scenar in the 7-08, if he was worried about velocity, and pick up another easy 100 fps while still maintaining a nice form factor.

Ya can also stuff a 123 lapua or a 129 ablr in a 260 and get 2900+ and be rockin' :cool:

The the velocity talk was stateing they are basically the same running a 140 in the 260 and a 168 in the 7-08
It was said the velocity loss trumps bc gain when moving up to heavier bullets in the 7-08 as it is not a rem mag and never will be still a fine cartridge though

Still, you give up too much velocity with the 162 in the 7/08 AI to ever catch even the 130 Berger in the 260 AI. I can't come within a hundred FPS of 2735 with a 162 in my 7/08 AI. It is probably just my gun. Even so lets compare using the 162 at Jordan' speed of 2735 fps and the 130 VLD at 2960 out of my 260 AI. At 1000 yards the 162 drops 40" more, it has 3/4" less wind drift than the 130 and the two are within 50 fps of one another.
Even when I use the high BC ELD-X 143 in my 260 AI, my velocity drops back to 2755. The ELD 143 bullet only outperforms the 130 in one area to 1000 yards, it has 1" less wind drift. Velocity and time of flight are tough make up for no matter how efficient the bullet is.
So on paper the argument could be made for whichever floats your boat. For me I prefer the far more pleasant to shoot 130 in the 260. Everybody's mileage may differ.

You can do about the same in the 7-08 with a 150 Scenar or ABLR, with equal or slightly better BC values ;)

Of course it's tough to compare apples-to-apples when we're talking about handloads in individual rifles, since 99% of handloaders have no way of measuring the peak pressure of their loads, which varies widely. For that reason, I went to Hodgdon for pressure-tested load data to confirm that both the SAAMI .260 and SAAMI 7-08 are able to come very close to 2750fps with 140 and 162gr bullets, respectively. Going AI will add 75-100fps in either case. So if we're doing a fair comparison, we'd be using about 2825-2850fps with either cartridge. Either way, performance is very close between the two. The same goes for the 120-130gr in a .260 vs. 140-150gr in the 7mm-08.

I would agree that there needs to be a balance between muzzle velocity and BC with any bullet to be used in medium to long-range applications, and that potential balance is easily quantified by comparing the form factor of the bullets in question.

Some excellent info coming out of this thread !

I still haven't made up my mind, so let's keep it going...


;)

See which one you can find lapua brass for then go the ai version

What the computer tells you is one thing. If you took both out on a windy day, you would see that the heavier bullet is less affected by the environment. The heavier bullet usually wins when the air gets bumpy. On the other hand though I agree that the 260 is most likely more pleasant to shoot and to some automatically makes it a better choice.

lol both and yes

There are a lot of things that affect the flight of a bullet. Many times the wrong factor is credited with the results. BC of a bullet and how well it does in the wind is a pure math calculation. Mass (the weight) is already accounted for in the BC calculation. So a heavy bullet and a light bullet of the same BC and velocity being equal will have the same wind drift.

I meant literally find like in stock ;)