Gary Reeder
Nothing new under the sun
Saturday, April 20, 2024, 16:10

Years ago I read something where the writer was bad mouthing P.O. Ackley and some of his wildcat cartridges. Ackley was, in my opinion, the father of wildcat cartridges. He stayed with the original cartridge but changed the brass in several different ways.

J.D.Jones came along and started building his Whisper cartridges that were totally different from Ackley's wildcats. Several of them were ripped off thru the years, including the 300 Whisper which became the 300 Blackout. A total rip off but to each his own. J.D. was the first to jump on the 6.5 bandwagon and it did very well for him. The 8.6 Black Out is a modification of J.D's various Whispers.
The only thing I see different is the twist rate. It is very radical and I am not sure what bullets can stand that twist velocity. But other than that it is a variation of a combination of the 338 Federal and one of J.D.'s whisper cartridges.

The shooting fraternity is going thru some changes right now. There for a while we were putting out a new cartridge almost monthly. Some were great cartridges while some took some getting used to. Some took more work than the average handloader was willing to undertake. But out of the almost 70 different wildcat cartridges we developed over the years at least 30 have been very good sellers and very good cartridges for the average handloader to work with. Our 378 GNR is probably the best all around hunting cartridge that we developed and hundreds of African, Australian and U.S. game have been taken with it. The 338 GNR and the 310 GNR, both like the 378 GNR are based on the great 405 brass. These 3 cartridges have helped quite a few handgunners to get into handgunning large game and large dangerous game.

The difference in the wildcat cartridges that are out now is what they are used for. J.D.'s cartridges were aimed at the military and the quiet sniping in the M-16 or some other military weapon. His heavy for caliber bullets at a sub sonic speed were a real change in the shooting sports and several were copied. The 300 Black Out for one. The new 6.8 Black Out may not be a pure copy of J.D.'s cartridges but it sure walks real close to J.D.'s ideas.
Now I am not trying to say the 6.8 anything is a copy of any of our wildcat cartridges as we didn't develop any sub sonic cartridges at all. I tried to stay as far away from any person's designs as I could. I guess if there were any similarities in our cartridges it would be some of P.O. Ackleys ideas. His straight case with a sharp shoulder was the main thing I kept in mind with our wildcat cartridges but it ended there. We cut the neck way down and used that extra space for powder to give us a better hunting cartridge. Even back with our first wildcat cartridge the 41 GNR, it had some similarities with some other wildcat cartridges although that was not in mind at the time. I had used Lee Jurras' wildcat cartridge, the 41 LEJ or just 41 JMP for Jurras Magnum Pistol in the Auto Mag was what gave me the idea for the 41 GNR. I had used the 41 Auto Mag for several years and had taken every game from skunks to cow elk with it. The 41 Jurras was simply the 44 Auto Mag sized down to 41 caliber.

One fine day while I was probably annoying Lee with my almost daily phone call, I asked him if anyone had ever thought of taking the 44 Magnum case and sized it down to 41. He said he didn't think so, that it was too normal, that wildcatters wanted something unusual like the 8.9 Kropochnick or something like that. With that encouragement I drew up the design and sent it to Dave Manson and in a couple of weeks I had my 41 GNR reamer. And it all started with that. And almost a new cartridge every few months followed.

Our wildcat cartridges are meant for the hunter. None are really designed for casual target shooting and shooting a couple hundred rounds on a Sunday afternoon.Some of our smaller cartridges like the Raptor series would be fine for shooting a couple hundred rounds target shooting on a Sunday afternoon.

I think we will probably see more 6.8 wildcats in the near future due to our military switching to the new 6.8.caliber cartridge. The 6.8 is not a new cartridge as it is simply a 270 caliber cartridge. What will be new will be the way it is designed and how it is promoted. Our 270 GNR is a great cartridge based like several others on the 405 brass. It is just that a 270 just doesn't come to mind anytime someone mentions handgun hunting. There have been 3 or 4 new wildcats introduced in the last couple of years that have died on the vine due to not being promoted. This new 6.8 could easily suffer the same fate. That we will find out over the next year or so.

We have one of our HHC hunts (Handgun Hunter's Challenge) coming up in a couple of weeks and Kase and I are planning to field test 2 of our newer wildcat cartridges on large hogs or maybe a Bison or Water Buffalo. They are the 411 GNR and 430 GNR, both based on the 460 S&W case necked down. The 411 GNR is the 460 necked down to 41 caliber while the 430 GNR is the 460 case necked to 44. Both are very powerful cartridges and should be excellent hunting cartridges.

As far as the 6.8 Black Out is concerned it may do exactly what the designers predicted. The older crowd will probably shy away from it due to it's similarities to the 300 Black Out and the fact that it was a stolen cartridge. But I guess we shall find out.