6.5 Short Mag

I had Tom Bryant build a custom 6.5 Short Mag for me the spring of 2010.  After thinking about purposes I decided I wanted a medium to long range varmint rifle that  was super accurat and could be used to hunt big game as well.  I spent weeks researching and discussing ideas with Tom.  Eventually I decided upon a 6.5 Short mag.  This cartridge is a complete wildcat, meaning that no company manufactures this cartridge.  With Tom's help I bought a bunch of 270 WSM Norma cases and sized them down to take a 6.5 bullet.  I wanted to shoot a 140 grain Berger bullet.   After building the rifle and spending a whole day breaking it in, we began load development.  To make a long story short we couldn't get the Berger's to shoot better than 3/4 inch groups.  We moved to a 142 grain Sierra Match King and got much better results, about 1/2 in groups.  Since I had to leave town for the summer I loaded up 200 rounds to take with me.  I also killed an antelope with it last fall.

Last week I decided to try working up a load using Hornady's 140 grain A-Max.  It is their match grade, varmint to thin skinned big game bullet.  I spent a few hours loading 3 rounds for each load, moving up .2 grains each time.   I took it out Saturday Morning to try them out.  After shooting a fouler shot I tried the first three round group and this is what I got.  There were two other groups in the bunch that shot in the .4's.