6mm Remington Loads for Most Big Game

The 6mm Remington (left) is shown with the .243 Winchester (center) and the 6mm Creedmoor (right). The superior 6mm Remington lost the popularity contest to the .243 Winchester, with the 6mm Creedmoor positioned to overtake the .243.

- Patrick Meitin

Ken Waters, in a “Pet Loads” column from 1998, (Handloader No. 194 August-September) expressed his desire to “prevent the untimely demise” of the 6mm Remington – a necked-down 7x57mm similar to RCBS founder Fred Huntington’s .243 Rockchucker, but with a slightly altered shoulder angle. Waters opined that the 6mm Remington was superior to the .243 Winchester in many ways, but had failed to gain the respect it rightly deserved.

Despite Waters’ appeal and esteemed standing in the firearms community, he failed to move the needle to any perceivable degree. If anything, the intervening 22 years have witnessed a further decline in the 6mm Remington’s popularity, with darned few factory rifles currently chambered for this exceptional cartridge. Steadfast fans of the 6mm Remington deal in vintage or custom rifles or rebarrel a favorite action for the cartridge as I have.

The 6mm Remington story has been told many times – how Remington, upon its 1955 release, and envisioning the .244 Remington (its original label) as a long-range varmint round – added a 1:12 twist suitable for stabilizing only lighter bullets in those Model 722 rifles. (For the record, I have assembled tight groups from a 722 with classic cup-and-core 100-grain bullets.) The same year, Winchester introduced its .243 with a 1:10 twist, allowing it to reliably stabilize streamlined 100- to 105-grain bullets better suited to big game, making it ideal for crossover varmint/deer-hunting duties for one-rifle owners. This gave Winchester a head start, despite the fact that Remington rectified the situation in 1963 by giving the .244 Remington a new 6mm Remington name and adding a 1:9 twist in newly-released Remington Model 700 rifles.