#Wildcat

Winchester Repeating Arms has released the list of their SHOT Show Special firearms. These are limited edition versions of their products that can’t be found in the company’s regular catalog. The dealers can order Winchester SHOT Show Special guns during the industry’s largest exhibition (Jan 18-22, 2021).

Yes, that Vortex, the optics company. Folks at Vortex Nation Podcast started a project of designing a new long-range hunting cartridge. Their goal was to create a 6.5mm (.264″) caliber cartridge for antelope/deer-sized game that performance- and length-wise would fall somewhere between the cartridges like 6.5 Creedmoor and 6.5-300 Weatherby Magnum. The result is a long action (3.340″ COAL) cartridge dubbed 6.5 BC (BC semi-officially stands for Bitch Cat).

Winchester has been producing 22LR rimfire ammunition for quite a long time. I would consider Winchester to be one of the leaders in rimfire ammunition production along with giants such as CCI and Remington. They have just released their new Wildcat Super Speed 22LR cartridge aimed at semi-auto rimfire shooters.

In this episode of TFBTV, Hop tests the new Winchester Wildcat to see if it can dethrone the Marlin 795 as the ultimate budget .22 LR plinker. The new Wildcat is lighter than a Marlin 795, cheaper than a Ruger 10/22, and with a few tasty bonus features of its own like one button takedown, and 10/22 magazine compatibility.

What a nonsense! What in the world is a non-existent standardized cartridge? OK, let me explain. At the beginning of 2018, a new Nosler cartridge was added to the list of SAAMI standard cartridges – the .24 Nosler. However, as of the moment of writing this article (early January 2019), I couldn’t find any place which had this cartridge available for purchase. That’s why I call it a non-existent standardized cartridge. Now let’s discuss the idea of wildcatting this cartridge and creating the .224-24 Nosler.

About two months ago we reported about Starline offering straight-walled unfinished .223 Remington brass made primarily for wildcatters. Apparently, Starline also offers such unfinished cases of 6.5mm Grendel and 6.8mm SPC cartridges. Starline calls these cases Grendel Basic and 6.8 Basic respectively.

Browsing through the CIP cartridge standards while doing a research, I noticed several cartridges named PICRA. The name was unknown to me and apparently, it is unknown to many others too. So I thought why don’t I do a little research to find out who has designed these cartridges? It was a matter of simple web search to find that company’s website. It turns out, that there is more than a couple of cartridges developed by them. In this article, we’ll learn about the PICRA company and take a brief look at their cartridges.

Many companies offer 80% firearm receivers, frames and other parts that are supposed to be serialized and legally represent the firearm. These non-complete parts don’t qualify as firearms and are useful for a number of reasons – to build your own gun, to avoid complications with the shipping etc. But what in the world is an 80% cartridge case?

So you want an AR-15 for hog hunting that can launch .40 cal (10mm) pills? This wildcat caliber might be what you are looking for. It is called .400AR and was developed for hog hunting. The designers had initial requirements to have the largest caliber that will allow having double stack loaded ammunition in magazines fitting into the AR-15 magazine well. They also wanted to have at least 2,000 ft-lbs (2,712 joules) of muzzle energy and be able to use one of common cartridge head sizes which would allow using an off-the-shelf AR-15 bolt.

Many of you may have read the title and asked: “What in the world is a .277 Wolverine?”. So first, let’s see what cartridge it is. In a nutshell, it is a wildcat cartridge based on .223 Rem or 5.56 NATO case with a .277 caliber (6.8mm) projectile. It is developed by Mad Dog Weapon Systems.

Reloaders, especially those manufacturing various wildcat loadings, rejoice! Creedmoor sports (yes, the name is rather familar to those same reloaders) has announced the release of their “Annealing Made Perfect” Induction Annealing Unit for reloaders to easily form brass cases, removing the common flame forming for the safer and more accurate induction method.

I have no doubt that the majority of our readers know about SAAMI (Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers’ Institute), which sets the ammunition standards, cartridge and chamber drawings etc. These standards are guidelines for manufacturers, but many reloaders, builders, wildcatters and others also use them as a reference. Anyway, if you hear about SAAMI first time, you can see and download the SAAMI cartridge drawings and much more interesting information on their website by clicking here.

While 6.5 Creedmoor is all the rage in the OEM world, quite a few in the reloading world have been looking at .260 Remington and its slightly hotter, smaller cousin, the 6mm Creedmoor for their precision long-range builds. Like the 6.5, the 6mm Creedmoor eeks out just a hair more case capacity (though some would argue this depending on the brass manufacturer).

Now here is a wildcat that I can get behind. The .30 ARX is an immediately semi-auto AR-15 compatible cartridge. It’s nothing special from a manufacturing standpoint; as the cartridge creator claims, the .30 ARX is simply a necked-up 6.5 Grendel to accept common .30 caliber bullets.

Inspired by the recent introduction of the 45 Raptor, an Australian shooter using the screen name of Quan-Time worked up another bigbore round based on the 308 Winchester case.  The new round is called the 458 dropbear.