AR alternative calibers.

[docmagnum357]

I have been a life long student of rifles and handguns. That means I have learned pretty close to 10% of what I DONT't know. I love tinkering and musing and loading a shooting. I head shoot deer unless I am hunting with a handgun, usually a 1911 04 a 625. I have killed enough white tails to know it really doesn't take a cannon to kill a white tail deer. It takes a cannon or more to anchor one from a bad shot, and sometimes a good shot that doesn't break the spine, skull, or shoulder(s) will require a gaping hole. If you wait for the shot a 22 will kill an elk. With that in mind i have been hunting the last two years with my AR. It was an entry level DPMS Oracle. I put a velocity trigger, free floated hand guard, and a too big scope on it. I shoot a 69 grain Sierra tipped match king. I wait for the shot, take my time, and squeeze. Now, with that said, I see deer almost daily. I am an old, fat, lazy man.I hunt to fill the freezer. A huge rack doesn't excite me nearly as much as two or three fat does feeding quietly. I get about as excited as i get when I shoot one out of a group and the others don't run out of sight/ range. Two for one, whoo hoo! ( no daily limit in my state. 1 buck, two does, all in one day or spread over the season, doesn't matter.) I would love to hunt elk or moose, and I would probably get "buck fever" as badly as anyone over a bull moose. Deer are food. "hunting " deer is a chore. So...I can tell you I do see the value of a more powerful load. I Might appreciate one myself if I was after Bears, moose, elk, even pronghorn. I probably wouldn't be nearly as patient if I was out of state or out of town and had limited time and access to game. I also understand first hand a 5.56 will deliver if you are a shooter. My 1911 has taken quite a few critters, both game and varmint out to measured 100+ yards distances. A #68 H&G will take white tail, as well as coyote, 'coon, 'possum, stray/feral dogs that kill calves,but that is another story.
Anyhow, My question or thread starter is this; the AR is here to stay. WHat are some of the forum members favorite alternative calibers? As I stated I have little need for anything except a 5.56. But my situation is different. I would advise most new hunters to look hard at a 30/30, 35 remington, or a 243 or bigger, likely even a 308 in a bolt rifle. What would you tell a new shooter to look for in the AR platform? and that includes AR 10. I really like the ballistics of the 25 sharps with an 85 grain bullet. 300 Black out has proven its self in the deer woods. 6.8 spc works. what else? What would you design yourself, and why? the 458 SOCOM sounds like a real deal black bear cartridge. Just trying to stir the pot, get folks thinking. No one got rich re working old Mausers and Springfeilds, but man, di we get some the the great cartridges from tinkerers and experimenters who were willing to put their money where their ideas were.

[Rcmaveric]

Well... I am a fan of 6.5 and .270 bullets. I dont know why i just like them. Probably because i started with a .270 Win and like to be different since everyone loves 30 cals.

For AR15 i love my 6.5 Grendel and I cant wait to build a .277 Wolverine. Dead is dead. Nice good recoils. Good size bullets. Never really like .243 sized bullets because of how they perform on game. If i was going to make a 30 cal AR it would be in 7.62 x 39. Not because it better or worse than the rest nut because i have copious amounts of the brass. I use 7.62x39 brass in my Grendel.

For AR10. I all read reload .260 Rem with cast bullets and if i got an AR10 it would be chambered in that. Just for ease of reloading.

I like my guns to share components.

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[Gtek]

"some the the great cartridges from tinkerers and experimenters who were willing to put their money where their ideas were"
Then it takes your MONEY to go play, gun rich money poor anyone?

[lefty o]

if i hadnt gotten into the 300ham'r, id probably have gone 277wolverine, but for non 5.56/223 my choice is the 300ham'r.

[6.5 CM]

Have 223 16", 223 10.5", 224 Valkyrie 24", 6.5 Grendal 24", 300 B/O 10.5". All are great and have their place.

[nawagner]

The only other one I've done is the 6.5 Grendel. I did an 18" barrel and had a chance to get out and shoot last week. I am very impressed so far.

[Boolit_Head]

300 Black out has proven its self in the deer woods.

300 Blackout has also proven to not work in the deer woods. Now that I have said that I also like the Blackout but within it's capabilities and I try to understand them. Taking one out with subsonic loads with match bullets and not getting perfect placement is a sure fire way to loose a deer. There is not a lot of shock in a load like that though there is penetration. It's not like the old 30-30's that everyone is used to. You have to understand it and use it within it's capabilities and not everyone does that.

With that in mind most of the cartridges in a AR have a use and some are better than others for the chosen application.

[Earlwb]

Basically, for the AR15 derivatives, it is any caliber that stays within the 5.56 NATO maximum overall length, from .17 on up to .50 caliber will work with it.
I like the .450 Bushmaster for short range big game hunting, brush woods, especially with pigs. The 458 SOCOM and the 50 Beowulf are also great short range brush calibers too. But the 6.5 Grendel, 300 Blackout, 300 Ham'r, 6.8 SPC, 7.62x39 are good for short to intermediate range hunting. There are numerous other cartridge calibers that work with the AR15 too.

[frkelly74]

There is a nice how to article on a 357 Max rimless AR over on Greybeard Outdoors . It kind of grabs my attention.

[Rcmaveric]

After a while i just feel like we are reinventing the wheel with some of these cartridges.

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[tja6435]

There is a nice how to article on a 357 Max rimless AR over on Greybeard Outdoors . It kind of grabs my attention.

This is what I'd like to do for my next rig

[P Flados]

The 357AR discussion at Greybeards is much more limited than the discussion at the web site where a guy has been having the barrels made in batches. He has ordered 10 more blanks for batch 4.

https://mdws.forumchitchat.com/post/more-blanks-ordered-112618-9930655

I have a barrel being made (not from a batch). After I get my 357AR running I will be posting updates to cast boolit thread at the link at the bottom of this post. I will also post occasionally to:

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?312306-357AR-(Max-Rimless)-from-223-5-56-caseshttp://

In terms of using cheap 5.56 brass, this is the biggest round that will run in a AR 15.

357 Max rifle ballistics are real close to 35 Remington. With a 357 max, maximum effective range for most game is based only on your limits for putting shots where they need to be. This sound great until you start doing your homework on drop & wind drift. Still it is nice to know the gun can do its part with ample smack if you can just take care to the pointing part.

The most common magazine option for the 357AR is a P Mag with side ribs removed. I have been working on a P Mag friendly boolit profile. The meplat is on the small side. At 0.180", it is real close to the meplat on a typical 30 cal instead of the 0.210" common on most 35s. Still the 30-30 has a good reputation with cast. I see no reason that 180 grs or 200 grs behind a 0.180" meplat will not do just as good even though the bore is bigger.

https://mdws.forumchitchat.com/post/357ar-357-max-for-the-modern-boolit-man-9735573?trail=25http://

[Texas by God]

I've yet to get a deer with my .300 BO, but I'm sure it will work. At present I'm using a Speer 150gr fp @1800 fps. I also use 110 and 125 grs at maximum velocity from a 16" barrel. But I would place a 150yd limit on shots. I'm working on a 6.5 Grendel and I'm thinking it might go to 300 yds if needed.

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[Shingle]

I have both 6.5 grendal and the 6.8spc. For a hunting round I use the 6.8 great round, the ballistics I see everyone yelling about in the grendal are fantasy unless you use a 26" test barrel. The only thing its got over the 6.8 is cheap wolf ammo IMHO. I load 90gr. gold dot and get 2800-2980fps depending on powder used and that is a 16" armalite carbine.

[docmagnum357]

I am also awfully interested in the Grendal , too. Need to look at the 300 hamm'r

[Blammer]

A new shooter. This is the key words for me.

308 AR-10, why? Tons of hunting and target ammo available anywhere. New shooters, with buck fever can still down a deer with a decent shot.

Once you get to the 'custom' caliber like 25 sharps, 25-223, 6mm-223, 7TCU, 458 socom, etc.. you are pretty much a reloader out of necessity for your rifle. If I lose my 25-223 ammo on a trip well I'm out of luck as there is not any on the shelves anywhere to buy.

so for a new shooter, 308 AR-10 is my pick.

[Bigslug]

After a while i just feel like we are reinventing the wheel with some of these cartridges.

Folks, we have a winner! Though I've been down the rabbit hole myself, I tend to think the "tinkerers and experimenters" have wasted an obscene amount of resources constructing an endless series of equally functional mousetraps.

There really is nothing new under the sun here. The same basic ballistics were packaged in many different ways during the black powder cartridge decades, then smokeless came along and we got the same basic ballistics packaged in hundreds more. When you take a retrospective look at it all, you have a truly staggering array of military cartridges that are .264" to .323" diameter, shooting bullets from about 140 to 220 grains, from 2000 to 2800 feet per second and if every one of them has not been used to harvest every game animal in the world, then their very near clones have.

The latest fad seems to be attempting to shoehorn the ballistics of these WWI-era cartridges that were designed for long-range, individual fire into an action length that was designed with mid-to-post-WWII concepts of controllable, close range area saturation in mind. In the AR-15, this is an exercise of cramming large amounts of poop into very small bags.

In the AR-10, the bag is a little larger, but the problem is similar. The mag wells of the NATO .308 semis were designed for a 150 grain bullet, and nobody in that time and place was thinking of wildcatting the guns, and they certainly weren't thinking of fitting longer, high-BC bullets with plastic nose cones into them. The 6.5 Creedmoor attempts to deal with this by moving the shoulder farther back. In the final analysis, it's just a 6.5 Carcano, Jap, or Swede wrapped in a colorful phosphated aluminum and plastic candy shell.

The attraction to the AR for it's ease of "gunsmithing" is understandable to me, but the notion that it is somehow the end-all, be-all of rifle platforms - ESPECIALLY due to the above magazine limitations - is not. The best you can hope to achieve is to duplicate the effect of some other cartridge that was doing the same thing as far back as the 1870's and repackage it as something that fits into your "pet" action.

The advice I would give a new shooter is this: There are a lot of gun mechanisms out there. Learn how to run more than one of them, so that when you decide you need more zip than Eugene Stoner's dwarf-length magazines can comfortably digest, you won't be left looking at lever, bolt, and break-actions like they're strange devices dropped from an alien planet.

[BD]

450 Bushmaster is basically the 45 acp of the AR world. Many choices for powder and projectiles, reasonable pressure, brass lasts forever, (or until it gets too short). Good for anything inside of 300 yards.

[Texas by God]

Well said, bigslug. Nailed it.

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[DCM]

300 HAM'R is my latest infatuation for the AR-15. The 556 being all it can be IMO

260, 308, 338 fed in AR-10. We have found that the 6.5 CM doesn't work with all reliable 308 mags making it a no go for me in the 10.

[bruce drake]

I recently re-chambered a 300BLK to a .30 Herrett Rimless (trimmed down and necked up 6.8SPC case) and I think that I've found the 30 caliber AR15 chambering for me. the 1-8" twist handles bullets from 120-200gr with equal accuracy and the brass is an easy reform. It also provide for a velocity level a bit above a 7.62x39 and closely matches the 30-30 with bullets under 170grs.
That said...I also own an AR10 in 308 Win so I know that 30 Herrett Rimless will not ever match the bigger 30 caliber cartridges but its a nice one anyways.

[William Yanda]

Check out the AR 500

[Baltimoreed]

Your thread title says alternative calibers and as you’ve deer hunt with a .45 I’ll throw the .45acp into your discussion. I’ve never been an ar kind of guy preferring walnut and steel [1903, garand, mini30] over plastic and aluminum but I do like the .45 acp in my ar builds. Accurate, same ammo as my pistols and revolvers, hard hitting and a great range and ipsc toy.

[Kimber1911]

I have a .458, lots of choices being the same bullets as 45 70, but the Grendel has me wondering?