Walter's 6.5 PRC Short Action Rifle

The yardstick for Modern Hunting and Target Comparisons

Like with Kilroy or Tyler Durden, everywhere Walter goes, 6.5 PRC was there, leaving a mark, hitting targets near and far and killing animals along the way. From private hunters in Africa to professional PRS shooters to people of the likes of Sawyer Clark and Jared from Tier 1, extremely knowledgeable bowlers all sing praises for the hopped up 6.5 Creedmoor, aka the 6.5 PRC. Walter has owned a 6.5 PRC for years but has never really fallen in love with it. Last Fall, Walter and Donny stopped by Helix 6 Precision to pick up a barrel for one of his Aero Solus rifles to fully see what all the fuss was about. To many, including the owner of Helix 6 Precision, Jon, 6.5 PRC is damn near the perfect rifle round, offering bowlers the ability to shoot steel out to nearly a mile and hunt to ranges that would make fudds slam the table and demand accordance to their narrow world view, spilling other patrons coffee and intimidating families dining.

With a heavier bullet and a few hundred feet per second more velocity than 6.5 creedmoor, the 6.5 PRC offers bowlers true short-action magnum external performance, all while balancing recoil and terminal effects. It bucks wind better, stays supersonic further and maintains enough velocity to expand further than other short-action calibers, and best of all bowlers can buy the ammo at most sporting goods stores. It represents the pinnacle of modern ballistics and manufacturing and moving forward, Walter is going to use this rifle and caliber as a baseline by which to compare other calibers and rifles too.

This rifle is not the normal rifle Walter would grab if heading to the woods to hunt or the range to bang targets. Walter is about maximizing the performance of small, compact rifles shooting flexible calibers, but he believes that it's very important to look at other points of view and see what can be incorporated into a bowler's philosophy and game.

Walter configured the rifle as follows; An Aero Precision Solus Action, A 22 inch 6.5 PRC 1/8 twist carbon fiber barrel, a EXLR Magnesium and Carbon Fiber Chassis, A triggertech trigger, an Element Optics Nexus Gen 2 4-25, and a SilencerCo Scythe TI. The rifle weighs in at around 12 pounds. Shooting hand-loaded 147 ELDM's, N656 Powder and Lapua Brass, it's the most accurate rifle in Walter's safe, and clocks in at 2866 FPS. It stays supersonic to 1450 yards at my elevation and expands out to 850 yards. It's a bit long for Walter's taste, but the whole package works together like a swiss watch and hammers.

Walter likes to put the data in his Revic binos and double check them with the Kestrel.

This week, Walter is heading out on a bear hunt in Southern Oregon and is taking his long iron. Well Walter, what if we don't want to run a short action magnum how can we achieve this level of performance? That's a topic for another day but Walter has two plans for how to get there.