I swore this year I was going to take my 30-30 for deer season. On a whim I decided to take my CZ 6.5x55 Swede last night, and darn if a buck didn’t present itself at 50 yards. Broad side shot, double lung. Bullet was 140 hornady interlock over 44.0gr of imr 4831. Maybe 2700fps, but pedestrian for sure. Buck ran about 20 yards cugging blood out both sides then piled up. Post Mortem showed a small amount of expansion (compared to ballistic tips) but little bloodshot meat and straight line penetration with both lungs destroyed. All with minimal recoil and blast. If you’ve never hunted with a 6.5x55 and have a an opportunity to, do it! I guess the 30-30 will have to wait until next year…

226MK25,

Congratulations on a nice deer. The 6.5 x 55 is a great cartridge...use it in good health.

Wes

Nice work! My son has an M96/38 Swedish Mauser and it's a fantastic rifle and an excellent cartridge. Our load of choice mirrors yours...we've put up some really nice groups on paper but have yet to take it on a hunt.

I’ve killed many, many deer with several different calibers but my all time favorite round has been the 6.5 Swede. The recoil is not proportionate to the down range effectiveness of this round. If you use the correct ammo, you can use it to hunt just about everything worth hunting here in the USA.

Congrats on your buck. Hopefully I’ll be able to post a pic of a good buck or 2 next month when rifle season begins here in Virginia.