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6 Ranch Podcast
6 Ranch Podcast
7mm Backcountry with Federal Ammunition
The folks at Federal developed a proprietary cartridge over the last six years that just launched. It propels a 170gr 7mm bullet at 3,000 feet per second from a 20” barrel. I sat down with Eric Miller from Federal to talk about this ammo. We are going to see more and more of these high pressure cartridges in the future. The physics and engineering behind it are fascinating. Enjoy
These are stories of outdoor adventure and expert advice from folks with calloused hands. I'm James Nash and this is the Six Ranch Podcast. Mr Eric Miller, we're talking about some interesting developments that are happening in ammunition. I'm here at the Western Hunt Expo in Salt Lake City, utah. Eric, tell me what's going on. So we launched a new cartridge. Who's we? Federal Ammunition, federal Ammunition Yep, I think folks have probably heard of you, yep.
Speaker 1:Yep I think folks have probably heard of you Yep, Yep, and we launched a new cartridge beginning of January January 7th to be exact was the actual launch date and what we launched was called 7 Backcountry Yep. And so it is. A new cartridge Was just approved by SAMI right before SHOT Show in January.
Speaker 2:What's SAMI?
Speaker 1:SAMI is our regulatory body that we adhere to and they set the essentially they set the regulations for cartridges. So if you always hear about SAMI approved cartridges, it kind of sets the parameter for what a cartridge should operate, the specs, the drawings, everything that goes along with that cartridge. It sets the standards so that Federal can load it, remington can load it, winchester can load it, hornady can load it. The firearms manufacturers put their chamber to that specification, gotcha. So then that we're all on the same, so that you pick up a 308 from X manufacturer and you pick one up from Y, the spec is the same for the chamber. So then that the ammo that we shoot across that and there's obviously more ammo brands than I mentioned we all adhere to that specification. So you think of overall length? That's set by Sammy Pressure. So we're going to talk about pressure with seven back country.
Speaker 1:So that's all set and what we look at, and it's really a safety mechanism that the industry uses.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love it, huge fan. I know it's always a push because there's oftentimes a brand who's trying to introduce a new cartridge at SHOT Show. So I imagine there's a huge effort on behalf of both engineers and the folks at SAMI leading up to that where they're trying to get this stuff done. But I think about it in terms of like boots. Right, I wear a size 12 boot, but if I go to Danner my size 12 might actually be an 11 and a half, or whatever.
Speaker 2:Because there is no Sammy for boots, but because of the requirement for tolerances and things that explode, then we need to have that stuff regulated and I think Sammy's awesome. Yep, yep, okay.
Speaker 1:So you got Sammy approval, so we got SAMI approval. That's badass. Good job. We put our drawings back in September. Yep, they were approved in January. We put a placeholder in before that.
Speaker 1:So, we've been working on the new cartridge which is 7-backcountry. We've probably been working on it for about two years Okay, longer for the process of the case. The peak alloys what we're loading with 7-Back Country, but that technology has probably been six or seven years in the process and started from, essentially, some solicitations from the military. That's how we went down this path and 7-Back Country is the commercial outcome of that research or development.
Speaker 2:When the military started doing this solicitation. I was aware of that and I was working on it with another company and I was very excited about this challenge right of trying to take a, you know, a 6.8 or 7 millimeter cartridge, move it really quickly out of a short barrel Right, and I've been a silencer guy for a long time. I think that muzzle brakes should be illegal. They are uncivilized and that recoil reduction is a huge portion of accuracy right.
Speaker 2:So I understand why people do it as a guide. If I see somebody show up with a muzzle break, I'm just crestfallen, right, because I can't be close to them when they're shooting without hearing protection, which is cumbersome in a hunting scenario, and then it's it's hard to communicate quietly if you're wearing hearing protection of any kind, and then if you're not wearing it, you're really exposing yourself to significant harm. So the the solution is a silencer, right, if you're not hunting with a silencer, you're dragging your knuckles everywhere you go. You need to get with the times. You need to get with the. You need to get with silencers.
Speaker 2:I'm going to talk about that until you're sick of it and then I'm going to keep talking about it after that. But if you hang an eight inch or nine inch or 10 inch silencer off the end of a rifle that has a 26 inch barrel, it's very cumbersome, correct, and barrel length used to be a requirement to achieve adequate velocity, but the way around that was to increase the pressure of the cartridge. But there was material limits to that, right. So these are some of the problems that you guys are trying to solve, not just for the military but also for the hunting community, correct.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what happens when you? You know we're talking about brass. Brass has limitations and as you look at the firearm, the action is not what's failing, the brass is what fails. When it gets to that pressure, when it increases pressure, the brass is what fails. And so when we started down this path with 7-back country, we did that same thing that you just talked about. We're looking at 26-inch barrels, 24-inch barrels. A lot of customers, shooters, were taking these great calibers cartridges, 7prc, 6.5, creedmoor, you could name a whole bunch of them and they're cutting the barrel lengths down because of that suppressor use. What happens then? As I cut barrel length down, I lose all the great performance of that great cartridge right, I just lost all the performance that I had because I cut the barrel length down.
Speaker 2:Because in physics and elsewhere there's no replacement for displacement. So you have a certain amount of volume inside that barrel and that is the time where, as that conflagration of powder turns into gas or plasma and expands, like until that bullet comes out, it can continue expanding and pushing on it and accelerating that projectile as soon as it uncorks out the end of the rifling dial. As soon as it uncorks out the end of the rifling, then that propellant can't push on it anymore. Right, right. So we have a finite limit to how fast we can get this bullet going. It's the same thing with archery and draw length. Right, I was just at Winter Strong.
Speaker 2:Sean Mellon was there, former NFL linebacker. The dude has a 31 and a half inch draw length. I hate him passionately. Big, tall, fit, beautiful man. He can draw 60 pounds with his draw length and he can shoot an arrow faster than I can if I'm drawing 90 pounds with a 28 inch draw length, because the arrow has more time on the string. Same thing with a bullet traveling down a barrel, yep, okay. So how do we fight it? How do we beat it?
Speaker 1:So we beat it by taking this technology, peak alloy, and it is a steel alloy. We took a standard long action. We started. We tried with a short action to start. We started with a seven millimeter odd eight, but we could not get enough powder. In that case we could beat certain calibers. We just couldn't get to the performance that we wanted. We just didn't have enough capacity in that short action. So we started there. We went to long action. Um, and when we're talking seven back country, it is standard long action. Um, standard overall length is a two, 70.
Speaker 1:This doesn't have a parent cartridge. If it did, it would be a 280 ackley. Okay, 280 ackley has a 40 degree shoulder. Okay, um, seven back country is 30 degree. But when you look at the cartridge you're going to think 280 ackley, 270, 30.6. And we went to. When we went to the rifle manufacturers and showed them the cartridge, there's nothing. The secret sauce is not in the cartridge itself, in any of the shoulders or overall length, anything like that it's in the case. And when you think of a Winchester short mag, some of the others, they had feeding problems.
Speaker 1:To be honest, when we produce short mag it's a relatively hard piece of brass to produce. Because of that, shoulder yep and we crush shoulders and fold necks and do all sorts of things. Still make great brass, but there are some challenges with that. This is very similar to what we do day in day out in making brass, just a completely different material. And peak alloy is a steel alloy, essentially the same alloy that could be used in the wall of a nuclear reactor, very different makeup. We didn't make it specifically for ammunition, it was out there. It wasn't developed for us. We took technology. It was out there, but the time involved on the research and development and by the team of engineers was to get the hardness correct and everything correct so that we could shoot it in a firearm, not damage an extractor. There were limitations that we wanted to hit and that's what we did with peak alloy and with that on a traditional legacy cartridge. Doesn't matter the cartridge, the caliber, somewhere between 60 and 65,000 pounds of pressure, 300 wind mags, 7 PRC, 7 mag doesn't matter.
Speaker 2:I don't want to gloss over that, because people oftentimes do, but let's talk about what that really means. Think about it for a second. You've got 60,000 pounds of pressure per square inch. That is gargantuan, right? Think of it on your foot. We're going to take 60,000. What would that be? What's something that weighs 60,000 pounds? I don't even know Semi-truck without a trailer, something extremely heavy. And then you're going to condense that down to one square inch and set it on top of your foot, right? That's a lot of pressure. That's a lot of pressure, and it's occurring very quickly, right? So it's an impulse of pressure as well, and it's in a very.
Speaker 1:when you look at your firearm chamber it it doesn't matter if it's a Magnum or a standard long action, but it's in a very small container compartment and with peak alloy. So we're 60 to 65. Traditional Peak alloy 7-backcountry is 80,000 pounds, and again I'm going to go back to standard long action. But we're at 80,000. And what that allows us to do in the failure point of brass when we are at 60,000, I can only put so much powder in that case to get to 60 or 65,000. And then I have to stop. That's the regular. That's where it's at.
Speaker 1:A proof load for brass is about 80,000. And what is proofing? So proofing is a. You are going to load that case to a pressure that the firearm will survive. Okay, right. And so it is a safety mechanism for us, for the firearms manufacturers, and some manufacturers will proof every gun before it goes out. Some manufacturers will proof just the action and do quality assurances throughout the process to make sure that there's no failure in the metal per se. And again, it's not the action that's going to fail, it's the brass that's going to fail. The actions that these firearms manufacturers make doesn't matter who it is can withstand far more than what we're shooting at.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But it's the brass that fails.
Speaker 2:If you wander over to your gun cabinet right now and you pull out your granddad's shotgun that's sitting in there and you look down at the portion of the barrel that connects with the action, you're going to see a little stamp. You might even see a couple of them, and those are proof stamps, right yeah?
Speaker 1:By a proof house Yep, yep, yep. And so they're tested. And every firearms manufacturer has a different process? Yep, but they are testing, they are safe and we make sure that we don't want to put that into question with the ammo. So we are going to make sure, we are going to do our due diligence, we are going to do all our research.
Speaker 2:We are going to do all of our testing to make sure that we put this out there and it's safe, all right. So we're at 80,000 PSI Now. We're more than half of an Abrams M1A1 main battle tank per square inch of pressure. Like that is still almost impossible to conceive of. Like condensing something with that much mass down into such a small space, something with that much mass down into such a small space, since we've achieved that, and done so with this nuclear reactor alloy that is in the brass, that is very. I guarantee you an engineer didn't have anything to do with calling it peak alloy.
Speaker 1:Right, that was the marketing side of it.
Speaker 2:That feels marketing to me, engineers would call it like M3, alpha, bravo, 279er. Yeah, point one. So yeah, now that we've done all this, we're ready to send this projectile out a shorter barrel I've got to talk about short barrels a little bit, because it's not just a matter of convenience and being able to get it around in and out of vehicles, um, in the brush, if you're putting the rifle inside your pack, things like that. Obviously this is going to be more, more important to have it have it short. But there's something that occurs when a projectile goes down the barrel, um called harmonics, and the barrel wiggles around.
Speaker 2:So if you were holding on to a garden hose and there was, you know, 30 inches of garden hose out past the end of your hand and you turn the water on, that hose would whip around, right. Something very similar happens with a rifle barrel. Now you have magnitude and frequency. So if I have six feet of garden hose out there, it's going to whip much more, but much more slowly. If I have six feet of garden hose out there, it's going to whip much more, but much more slowly. If I have 12 inches of garden hose, it's going to whip faster but with less magnitude Every time you cut a rifle barrel down it's going to get stiffer, so the magnitude is going to decrease.
Speaker 2:And every time I've cut a rifle barrel down, the gun is shot more accurately than it did before, every single time, not most of the time, not some of the time, every time. But the drawback was I'm giving up on velocity, and velocity is a cheat code in hunting. It really, truly is, because it's going to decrease your margin of vertical error on a shot, truly is, because it's going to decrease your margin of vertical error on a shot. And if you accidentally, you know, hit a piece of brush in front of or behind your target with your laser range finder, that velocity is going to provide you a margin of error.
Speaker 2:That's really important, as well as lethality with that projectile, right, if I tossed 160 grain bullet at you right now, it would do nothing. But if it was moving now it would do nothing, but if it was moving very quickly it would do a lot. Right, velocity does matter, it absolutely matters. And I think as laser range finders became more and more available and they started to have ballistic compute systems in it and stuff like that, a lot of people kind of let go of velocity and they thought, well, all I really care about is accuracy, because I'm just going to be dialing for everything anyways, and what we saw come from that was the disaster, which is the 6.5 Creedmoor. And this is a really fun rifle to shoot on the range at close range. It's good for deer, it it is, in my opinion, as, as an elk guide for the last 25 years, it's. It's inadequate for elk, it's too small. But, um, people, people forgot about velocity, right?
Speaker 1:yeah, so now we're getting it back. We're getting it back. Uh, we're getting back in a shorter barrel and the other part to a little bit of a tangent, for what on suppressor use? There is a part of it. When you put a suppressor on the end, I would argue that you are going to shoot better because of recoil for one, and also, when you talked about it earlier, the noise portion of it. Yeah, I don't have to think about the concussion from yeah, the noise, yeah and also the recoil.
Speaker 1:So in a bit I'm inherently going to shoot a little bit better with the suppressor.
Speaker 2:Everybody does.
Speaker 1:Everybody does, and I wish I would have shot one years and years before. And now that I do shoot one love it. Wouldn't shoot without one Same.
Speaker 2:That's the biggest problem about them. As soon as you shoot with one, you're like well, why didn't I do this before? I'm not shooting without one now, right, why didn't I do this?
Speaker 1:before. I'm not shooting without one now, right, yeah. And so when we talked about and we're looking at this, we went to the gun manufacturers, showed them the cartridge and we said 20-inch barrels. And that was our kind of our direction as we went through and the engineers had developed, the team worked on this, looked at this, then went to the marketing team and said this is how this is what it does, this is what we're going to talk about, this is how you're going to position it for the marketing folks. And they did a great job on that side. And the engineers did a fantastic job on their side, proving out and showing this is what I can do at 20 inches. This is what it does at 26 inches or 18.
Speaker 1:And we went to the firearms manufacturers with the idea of 20 inch barrels. It quickly went to 16s and 18s and again the whole point was I'm cutting the barrel down, I'm putting a suppressor on. Now I have a very manageable firearm. Think of getting in and out of a side-by-side, getting in and out of the truck, putting it in a case. Don't have to take the suppressor off. All of that some of getting in and out of a side-by-side, getting in and out of the truck, putting it in a case uh, don't have to express her off. All of that. Some of that we didn't even really think through per se as we started, but obviously quickly became evident as we got to these shorter barrels. And what we didn't give up was the performance.
Speaker 1:So we're we're 20 inch barrel 170 class bullet. We offer more, but we're going to talk about the 170 grain bullet. Okay, and it's 3000 feet 3000 feet per second Out of a 20 inch barrel.
Speaker 2:So we are beating 7 PRC.
Speaker 1:We beat 7 mag. We beat 280 Ackley.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And depending on the ammo and the rifle, we're going to beat 7 PRC by 250, 300 feet per second. When you're comparing apples to apples On the shelf, when you look at 7 backcountry, we show the ballistics for 24-inch. Because if I pick up a 7 mag box and I pick up a 7 backcountry box, I want to look at them and I'm going to go 3150 for backcountry and 7 mag is 2850 or 27. I'd have to look it up and see what exactly it is.
Speaker 1:I want to compare apples to apples, but on the back we show the 20-inch. Because that's really where we go down the rabbit hole and say this is the way that the gun manufacturers are going with their platforms. They're shortening the barrels. Some are 22, 20, like I said, 18 and 16. Put a suppressor on the end, but we didn't lose any of that performance. And coming full circle back to this, we can do that because of the 80,000 pounds of pressure. That 80,000 pounds I'm putting enough powder in the case. I'm not compressing the powder, but I'm putting enough powder in that case. Standard long action to push that bullet 3,000 feet per second. And that is the case is how we do that. The case contains all of that pressure. The gun doesn't know the difference if it's shooting brass or alloy, because all of that 80,000 pounds is contained within the backcountry case, the peak alloy. And that is how we get to that performance level because of that case.
Speaker 1:It's not a special powder. What we load, the powder that we use today in the factory, we load in other calibers, 6.5, creedmoor 308. You know it's across. What we're loading is proprietary, but that has a lot more to do with maybe some of the coatings and just but there will be a commercial equivalence to that, but it is nothing. The secret sauce again is not the powder. It is that case.
Speaker 2:I know the question that a lot of people are asking right now is will it be reloadable?
Speaker 1:It is reloadable. So we're working through that. We've been using a rock trucker press and an RCBS die for I don't know the last nine to 12 months. We modified what RCBS sent us a little bit. Did you have to change the alloy of the dyes? No, it was carbide. Okay.
Speaker 2:And really, what you're doing is essentially neck sizing. That's what I wondered about. Yep, so it's the case, doesn't grow, is there?
Speaker 1:trimming involved. There's no trimming involved, because this case doesn't grow at all. Well, that's nice, yep, and it's not. It's alloy, it's steel alloy, but it's normal pressure. We're not doing anything fancy with a lube or a wax or you know. It's just essentially. If you think of an expander ball or a mandrel, you're just resizing the neck.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And that's all you're. We're not going to be able to anneal it. Okay, to start, we have. We have five, five skews that in our lineup. One of them is they are all nickel plated but one of them is a matte finish nickel plated in our Fusion Tipped. That particular case is not plated on the inside of the case. The bright nickel which follows our premium lineup is coated or plated on both the inside and the outside. So we're going to start with that because if something happened to that fusion tipped case and you got a little bit of surface rust, changes the volume. We're not going to go down that path with reloading. So to start with, the bright nickel ones will be the ones that are going to be reloaded. And again, you're essentially resizing the neck standard 210 primer and there will be commercial equivalent powders that you'll be able to load. We'll put the data out there at something less than 80,000. And then we are going to have to work through the pressure portion of how do we measure that. It may be by speed. We might say you get to 3,000 feet per second and that's you're done. But we'll work through that and I would imagine sometime by this summer.
Speaker 1:We've engaged other reloading companies Dillon, custom, short Action. We've sent them cases. They'll work through it. We obviously started with RCBS because we had the relationship with them. But to start federal, we load ammunition as a company. That is our primary objective. But we also understand the reloading market is a big segment and making sure, but we're going to load first and then we'll come back and make sure that the reloading market understands there's going to be a lot of nuances to it. Again, it is not brass. So there's a little education piece that says it's not brass. We're going to treat this a little different and there'll be some parameters around how to reload it and just kind of take what you think of brass and go put that to the side. Is it a large rifle primer?
Speaker 2:It is a large rifle, primer Yep 210.
Speaker 1:Good, good, and there are no. The same tells that you see in brass where you're popping a primer, okay, when you're over pressure. You don't see that in the alloy because that primer isn't moving. You're not going to flatten a primer, you're not going to pop a primer um. You just don't see that. Even in our proof loads we don't see pop primers um. We don't see extractor marks, anything like that in a proof load when we shoot with alloy um. So there will just be some differences as we go down this reloading process.
Speaker 2:So six years of brilliant engineers and thermophysicists working on this stuff. What was the biggest hurdle?
Speaker 1:I think it was where we're going to land with pressure.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:What we're going to do for performance. You know the material was available. There was, I wouldn't say it's the boring part, but the manufacturing process. There are so many little avenues that go into making the loaded round and a lot of that is on the front side with the engineers and looking at how do we get this case, how do we load it? How do we form it? Yep, how do we put it on? Does it go on a normal head turn machine? Can we put it on a normal JIT like we do on brass? All of those questions we went through.
Speaker 1:Once it gets to the formed case stage, we put it on a primer insert machine and it runs just like a regular standard load. We put it on a primer insert machine and it runs just like a regular standard load. We put it on a standard loader. None of that portion of it is not different. It's everything that leads up to that part. So that's what they worked on and as we were going through the marketing and going through the development, we were obviously still learning things. We're very good at nickel plating brass. We didn't know how to nickel plate steel. Sure Alloy. We had to learn how to do that Did you do it with electrolysis.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we actually send it out just because there's a whole bunch of science behind the chemicals that we use that is specific to brass, that has nothing to do with alloy, so we can't mix them, we can't put them in the same tank, we don't have a line that we can add on to that kind of thing. So we do send it out to be plated. Same with annealing. We have to send it out to a very specific annealer for the exact temperature that we want, and the hardness so I had to work through all that and that's a lot of what that team did is to get to that point.
Speaker 2:Cool. Well, internal ballistics are fascinating, often slept on as far as people's understanding of what's going on. So everything between the primary getting struck by the firing pin, to the bullet exiting the end of the barrel or the silencer, that's our internal ballistics. Let's get into the external ballistics a little bit. That's something that I think is thought about probably too much these days. We've got 170 grain 7mm bullet. What's our ballistic coefficient? It's got to be over 500.
Speaker 1:Depending on the bullet I know for. So we're loading five loads. Okay, we have a Berger 195, which is the heaviest hunting bullet that we could find. That BC is 755. Yep, so cup and core bullet long, heavy, heavy for caliber.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:We load a Barnes LRX. Okay, I know that BC is 0.513. Okay so copper13. Okay so copper bullet. Yeah so heavy, heavy bullet. And then our terminal ascent bullet is 0.645.
Speaker 2:Okay, and what is? The burgers are wonderful on the range. I've seen a lot of failures on wildlife with them. What is the terminal ascent bullet?
Speaker 1:Terminal ascent is a federal made bullet that we make in Minnesota in the plant in Anoka. It is an iteration of Jack Carter's Trophy-Bonded Bear Claw. Okay, it must be the fourth or fifth version of that bullet. You know we just kept improving on the original and it is a bonded. I like to call it a bonded match-grade hunting bullet. Okay.
Speaker 1:I like to call it a bonded match grade hunting bullet. So it is not a match bullet but we have a very tight spec internally that we have to hit with that bullet and so we have a lot of Q&A or quality and assurances that we put into that bullet to make sure that we hit that spec. It is a bonded bullet, solid copper shank. We have what we call a slipstream tip, which is a hollow tip on the end. Okay, and what that allows us to do when that bullet essentially reaches the end of its terminal velocity, where it does not have enough energy to upset, that bullet because of fluid dynamics in that hollow point fills up with fluid blood and allows some expansion, essentially at the end of where the velocity would normally not allow that bullet to upset. So we do get some upset to the bullet.
Speaker 2:What do you mean by upset?
Speaker 1:So the terminal, the penetration, so after I penetrate, the diameter, the expansion of the bullet. So my bullet is upsetting. When you look at a mushroom Yep exactly Now.
Speaker 1:Now if you look at it, it doesn't look like a whole lot at say, depending on caliber, 995 yards, but there's still some energy transfer. What I really like about the bullet is it is a robust bullet, bonded, and even at 10 or 15 yards, where that bullet is moving so fast, I don't know that you could make a bullet strong enough that it would completely stay together. We still get a very high weight retention percentage-wise. But after that point, as the velocity slows down a little, I'm going to be 90, 95, 96, 97% weight retention of that original 170 grains or whatever. It's a different cartridge. I'm going to retain that weight and all of that weight continues through the animal. I continue with that energy transfer, and not all the time, but sometimes you're going to capture it on the other side. The far side Hides elastic. I'll capture it sometimes on the shoulder. A lot of that there's so much that depends on is the animal quartering away is it watering to me?
Speaker 2:hit on the way there do I hit a?
Speaker 1:rib? Do I glance off the shoulder blade? Do I blow right through the blade? Yeah, all of that affects the bullet and my personal opinion is I want that bullet to be as close as I can get to the original grain weight 170 grains and I want that energy and I want to be able to carry it through as much as I can throughout my animal. Yeah, and that's I, like a bonded bullet. Everybody has different.
Speaker 2:So the lead is like chemically bonded to the copper of the jacket.
Speaker 1:Chemically and mechanically and mechanically bonded, so we do have a bullet that we make which is our fusion tip bullet in this lineup that is molecularly bonded and still bonded, but different process. So I take a lead core, I put it in a bath of copper and the copper electronically bonds to that lead core Right. That makes a very concentric bullet and a very accurate bullet.
Speaker 1:I have no variable in that bullet because it is very uniform all the way around and inherently is very accurate. The terminal scent bullet is also and I'm going to go back to match grade so we make it as accurate as I can. But because of that bullet and having a solid copper shank it's not like a cup and core bullet or, in our fusion tip, molecularly bonded bullet. So there is some accuracy but it is still MOA or sub MOA bullet. It may just not be as accurate as a fusion tip. A lot of that depends on how we load it and we are finding that we can. You know, a lot of the rifle manufacturers most of the rifle manufacturers that we've worked with all require some sort of MOA guarantee on their rifles. We're a large part of that in the load development.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, massive.
Speaker 1:When we started we sent them function ammo shoots it it's fine, works in 80,000. They knew it would. They were already going down that path 80,000. They knew it would. They were already going down that path. Then we tweaked them and the onus was on the engineers to make sure that it was the most accurate load that we could get. So we talked about we're going to talk about overall length, we're going to talk about powder charge. Um starts with how the bullets made, making sure that you know we don't have a heel on the bullet or anything. You know that that it is is the best bullet that we can make. That lends itself to being the most accurate bullet and then, in turn, the most accurate load we can get.
Speaker 2:Okay Well, elk hunters, bear hunters, deer hunters, you need to be paying attention to this one. You're going to have an accurate rifle that you can handle well, that you can put a silencer on the end of. I know a bunch of manufacturers have gotten on board with building this out, including Seekins, with all the new stuff that they just rolled out which is pretty exciting to me.
Speaker 2:I'm going to do a podcast on that in the future, when me and Maddie have a little bit more time in our lives. Okay, so this thing is fast. It's got a high BC. It's a well-constructed bullet. I'm going to encourage everybody to check out this Terminal Ascent bullet. That's going to be your game bullet, from what I'm hearing for sure, this is a really, really legitimate option that I think people should be considering for Western rifles.
Speaker 1:And it's not just you know when you think about it. For Western rifles, yeah, and it's not just you know when you think about it. I would still say most of the game shot is probably still east of the Mississippi and so the marketing portion of it is really where is your back country? I hunt whitetails in Wisconsin. I'm not even sure I can see a hundred yards, let alone shoot past a hundred yards. For the most part, yeah, but I would still shoot this caliber. I would pick the fusion tip bullet or the Barnes bullet. It just depends on what you're using it for. But it takes out. You know I can make some adjustments with the scope and dialing but again, you touched on it it takes out some variables in my holdover. Touched on it. It takes out some variables in my holdover. Instead of dialing in at 200, now I don't have to really adjust for hold until it's 300 or 350, depending on the bullet. I'm shooting all those things and I still.
Speaker 1:I would encourage everybody to go out and shoot. Make sure you know where your rifle shoots. Shoot past 100 yards, shoot as far as you can conceivably. I know some ranges you just can't. The gun may dial in at 100, but there's a big difference between shooting at 100 and shooting at 400, 500, 600 yards. But with this caliber, with the speed, everything that we're shooting, you can make up for that. You'll have trust in the rifle, you'll have trust in the ammunition, you'll have trust in the ammunition yeah, and that the performance is there.
Speaker 2:So yeah, well, look, folks, you know that I love long range shooting. Um, I'm passionate about precision guns, but when it comes to hunting, I want that animal to have powder burns on it. Get as close as you can like. Reduce that variable. Have fun with your hunt. Remember to have that stock. Remember to have that patience and set up your ambush position so that you can be as close as possible. I promise you'll get more satisfaction out of a close hunt than you will out of a long range hunt. I promise you.
Speaker 2:This isn't a, this isn't a wildland math competition, right. But when you get to the range, have fun burning it way out there and learning the wind and playing this game. It's wonderful, do it. It is. Encourage people so much to experience both long range and short range. Keep the hunting short range and then have fun shooting long range when it's on paper or steel. Yeah, okay, well, eric, thank you so much for your time. This stuff is available now. People can get it. They can find it. They can order it online. They can find it at Cabela's or whatever.
Speaker 1:Yep, yep. So we started with 13 gun manufacturers. Within that 13, I think, there's 84 models available 84 models Weatherby alone has 13. Again, you touched on the Seekin's point. If you haven't looked at the new action, definitely go look at the new action. It is fantastic, love it.
Speaker 2:Weatherby's got some great new stuff too. They do. Since Tim Butler's come on board over there. He's done wonderful things for that company and I know Tim helped out with engineering on this cartridge as well, and you guys have heard me talk about him in the past, but he's probably the greatest mind in firearms alive, so anything that he touches you can have a very reasonable expectation that it's going to be fricking awesome.
Speaker 1:And this is a case of that. Yeah, we had. We had great partners in this launch. We had again, I'm going to say, 13 gun companies, but Proof Research, fierce, savage, weatherby, glenn and Seekins were great. I mean, all of our partners were fantastic. There's more gun companies, you know. Look at them. There's some great firearms out there. A lot of these guys have already shipped firearms. A lot of the dealers and your local gun store have already sold what they've gotten. We've shipped ammo out. We have it, you know, available. It's shipping. We're loading it as fast and as best as we can. Cool, so it's getting out there. Awesome, just keep your eye out for it and it's available.
Speaker 1:Great, thank you so much for the information, yeah anytime, appreciate you.
Speaker 2:Bye everybody. Thank you to everyone who has taken the time out of their busy lives to write a review for the show and share it with their friends. I'm extremely proud of how intelligent, engaged and adventurous this audience is. Original music for the Six Ranch Podcast is written and performed by Justin Hay. Art for the Six Ranch Podcast was created by John Chatelain and digitized by Celia Harlander. Thanks for listening and we'll see you again next week.