How many was rounds is that???

I have shot out one barrel in my life...it was a 25-06, in a Ruger 77..I bought it second hand...when I was shooting a bunch. I put maybe 1200 rounds thru it...don't know how many before, probably 200-300 before me. I have a friend in Germany, that runs the shooting cinema at Blaser...they have a 8x57 barrel that has over 6,000 rounds thru it...it will still hold MOA...good barrel, or good steel quality I guess...

Ed

So Weatherby finally did what Weatherby fans have been saying for years. We've always wanted them to neck down the 300 case to 7mm, 270 and 6,5, it only took them 60 year's to get the message.

It seems like a natural.

Long-range shooting is popular, and 6.5's are popular...

Weatherby is famous for being the biggest and the baddest.

2500 on the .260 Rem, and I have 1200 on the 6.5 Creedmoor. That is because if a person wants to be proficient at shooting distance then they need to practice, so I practice.

You might want to think about QPQ i(melonite) your barrels..it will make them last 2x 3x longer if you do that much shooting...$150 worth of QPQ could save you a little longer on a $400 dollar barrel, with another $300 worth of gunsmithing...

Ed

Some people predict the barrel life at less than 800-900 for this new round, in some circumstances...

Who are some people?

Well our resident reloader expert and some of the people that reviewed the gun and spoke with wetherby about it

Not a problem for me, I doubt any of my Weatherby's will see 200 rounds before I die. Considering my age a new 6.5-300 will see well less than 100 rounds.

I will prolly shoot my weatherby 3-4 times a year so it's gonna take me 200 years to wear it out

Imo this round makes more sense than the .270 and 7mm wby mags

You can shoot out a barrel on a 22-250 in a day on a prairie dog town if the shooting is fast and you do not let the barrel cool down.

Heat is a big factor in shooting out a barrel, cool it off between each series of shots and the barrel will last a lot longer. Generally the more powder burned relative the bore size the faster a barrel will heat up.

The way most will shoot a big overbore round like the new one from Weatherby is slow fire and if allowed to cool between say 3 shot groups the higher the round count will be before accuracy degrades if it ever does for the owner.

140's and 130's don't excite me but something in 100 or 95 damn sure would. A 100 grain Nosler Partition would be most excellent.

At 400 yards I'd say the 6.5-300 will be traveling as fast as your 260 does at the barrel.

I've never had any variety of 6.5 so I just had a 26 Nosler built. It will be a hunting rifle and not a frequent paper puncher. I'm 61 years old so I'm pretty sure that the barrel will outlast me!

I understand that target accuracy can dictate a barrel’s life. Benchrest shooters scrap a barrel when it begins to open up a few tenths of an inch.

I’m not trying to be critical, just curious, but what makes a person decide the barrel is shot out? Especially on a hunting round, like a Weatherby. If you had a Rem 700 7mm Mag in beautiful shape but with 2,500 rounds through it & it shot 2” groups, would you sell it to a hunting buddy? Heavily discount it? Give fair warning?

If it couldn't do better than 2" groups I'd rebarrel it.

So...let's see if I understand this caliber and its usage. It's for long range shooting (traveling as fast at 400 as my poor little 260 is at the muzzle, per HwyMan), but it's probably only going to be shot a couple of times per year by the folks that buy it. How will that help them be proficient with the rifle and cartridge? Maybe they'll practice with a 260.

Exactly my thinking.

Complete loss of consistency. A rifle that used to put five in half an inch at 100, went to 2". I sold the entire rifle and told the buy the barrel is done, it needs a new barrel. He took my word for it and said he would have it rebarreled. Course not everyone will be so honest. The .22-250 has been shot out also, and I put a new barrel on it. The old barrel is nothing more than steel to pound into a knife.

Might be they're already proficient with rifles and calibers with that type velocities and have been for over 40 year's.

I've never seen my dad miss with a rifle, and at best he shot a couple times a year before deer season to check his zero. He was able to drop deer out 400 yards, and never used a range finder or turned any knobs on his cheap Simmons scope.

Not everyone has to shoot three boxes of shells a year to be able to go and kill animials


I shot my .270 twice about a week ago to check it before I go on an elk hunt....first time that gun has been shot at paper in I don't know how long. last 7 times it was shot prior to that was all into animals. I would imagine it hadn't been shot at paper in a few years prior to those 7

Exactly. Plus, "proficiency" is a relative term. Maybe to you, proficiency is the ability to compensate for drop and wind out to a thousand yards, and shoot MOA groups from the kneeling position. To others, proficiency is to be able to hit a target 1/2-3/4 the size of a game animals vitals out to the extent of a gun's point blank range, from a improvised rest in field conditions. With an accurate rifle, most hunters can realistically expect to pull a gun out and fire it for the first time since the last season and still shoot at least that well. So you go to the range, confirm it's still on, and save your shells to put meat on the table and a trophy on the wall. Not everyone has the time, money, or even the desire to go out every weekend and shoot steel at over 600 yards. Most of us don't even have a place like that to go.

Guys like that have natural talent. And just like any other thing in life it is the exception, not the rule. The rest of us have to work at it, to be as good as we would like to be.