The modern-cartridge argument normally begins in the same manner: smaller groups, flatter, less wind drift, and greater “downrange authority”. The implication is that the elder standbys just win campfire debates due to the influence of the nostalgia drug. However, the question to hunters is much more basic which element of the system has changed and which element has simply been packaged better?
Begin orders with a fact which is demonstrated on the majority of rifling ranges: most of the newer chamberings will shoot in good practice in the ordinary factory rifle with the ordinary factory ammunition. One of the reasons is the transition of the industry to smaller, more repeatable dimensions- cartridges, and chambers that do not leave slop in the area of the neck of the case and the leade. That does not make a cartridge a magic bullet, but it does provide a way of making mass-produced rifles stuff the bullets into a “smaller space” without a customized chamber job.
The second silent modification is twist rate and it is important since the contemporary hunting bullets continue to increase in length. The quicker twists stabilize long and heavy-for-caliber designs that the classic specs have problems with. The .30-06 or.300 Win. Mag. has long inhabited the 1:10 neighborhood; more recent long-range-oriented.30-caliber magnums have moved faster, and the 1:8 spec of the.300 PRC is one example. The additional rotation is not of hype, but of putting the smoother projectiles of today on a steady ride in order that they may remain shaped in the form they should, and line straight through the wind.
This is the elbow joint of it: the superior benefits of the so-called “modern cartridge” are usually reaped on the reverse side of the bullet, not on the brass. The long, fine-entry ogives and boottails which increase their ballistics coefficients (BCs) assist bullets to retain the velocity, flatten the trajectory and to minimize wind deflection. The power of a bullet to overcome the atmospheric drag and other effects of the wind is better characterized as the BC. Increased BC normally implies a larger speed in the tank, downrange which reduces the time of flight and eases wind calls.
Measuring those benefits is possible. One test of four 180-grain bullets of the .30 caliber with a 200-yard zero and a 10 mph crosswind had the round-nose drifting at 43.4 inches at 500 yards and the sleeker spitzer types drifting within the mid-teens to high-teen range with the best BC of 14.5 inches. The round-nose reached 1,365 fps and 745 ft-lbs at the same range, and the slickest spitzer reached 2,196 fps and 1,928 ft-lbs, a distance that has naturally to be taken into consideration when a hunter is trying to maintain the impact speed at as high a level as will give satisfactory expansion.
However, the form of the bullet poses a packaging challenge on the majority of the legacy cases. Bullets that are long-nosed, high-BC, consume the length of magazines, and when clamped in deep to fit can either creep into available powder space or cause clumsy geometry at the case mouth. This is why numerous new cartridges were attracted with large head height (space of long bullets) and throats designed to host them without failure of functionality.
The other actual engineering win is efficiency. Conservative speed demons tended to run “overbored”, too much powder burned away before the bore could burn it effectively and with additional blast, recoil, heat and a faster rate of throat wear. Most contemporary designs were constructed to operate around the performance boundary, not to exceed it, which can make them easier to tune as well as easier to practice with, particularly in the case of hunters who do not shoot more than a few rounds per annum.
All these cannot cancel the classics. Background noise may be in the form of trajectory, BC, and the older cartridges have never had an issue putting venison in the freezer. It is only that the current rifles, current chambers, current twists and current bullets are more and more of a set and that method of approach is where the practical advantage is to be found.
