New Howa Grendel owner

[LRRPF52]

For bolt guns, the mini action allows for shorter bolt travel and a smaller, lighter action when chambered in Grendel.

The other pro is projectile selection.

With .243 Win, you’re in the 55gr to 100gr weight class for hunting ammo, the lightweight bullets for varminting of course.

With 6.5 Grendel, you’re in the 85gr to 130gr for factory ammo, and up to 160gr if you want to load older round nose bullets that hail from the pre-WWII era designs common on the 6.5x54 Mannlicher and some 6.5x55 Mauser. There’s a good balance of hunting and target ammo for 6.5 Grendel, as well as cheap steel case for getting trigger time.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a factory target load in .243 Winchester, because it was meant to be a light recoiling hunting cartridge from the start, so production rifles have been configured and marketed that way since its introduction. If you custom-build one, they make awesome target rifles, but there is very little support at all in the industry for that use, and you’ll find a lot more wildcat options and speciality case designs for 6mm target work. The same is true for 7mm-08. Awesome cartridge design with tons of potential-whole market is geared to hunting rifles and ammo, no target loads.

Another interesting thing in the ammunition discussion is that much of the 6.5 Grendel factory target ammunition is great for hunting work too. We saw this with the initial 123gr A-AMAX from Hornady, as well as the 123gr ELD-M, and PPU 120gr MPT.

Another advantage to Grendel barrels is the tight twist rate (1/7.5 to 1/9), and the dual-use you get for a hunter that can also be used for target work. There are a lot of 1:10 twist .243 Win rifles out there that are best left for the shorter hunting bullets. This is why LR competitive shooters spec out tight twist 6mm pipes since they know they’ll be shooting longer, high BC bullets that like to be spun faster.

So there are some palpable advantages to 6.5 Grendel over the .243 Winchester, especially if you don’t want to buy 2 different rifles and you like to shoot target and hunting, and like a shorter action that’s closer to a rimfire in size in some of the bolt guns.

The .243 Winchester obviously has its advantages though with velocity, generally giving you 200fps more speed with the same bullet weights compared with same barrel lengths. Within close hunting ranges, this might work against you though with extreme fragmentation and meat damage, with reduced penetration.

Grendel is really Goldilocks in that respect.