Aug 7, 2020 4 min read

We humans look at numbers to tell us what is desirable and/or what represents great battles. With thousands taking part, there was the great tank battle at Kiev. When one hears the number 300, he or she cannot help but be reminded of the fantastic delaying battle at Thermopylae as well as the documented into the Valley of Death rode the 600.

We are impressed by numbers and are often influenced by a certain number. We were discussing that very idea the other day and the importance of the number 3,000.

It is the number that separates the good performance from the mundane. While a potential buyer ignores a round that moves the bullet at a measly 2,999 feet per second he jumps for joy at the round moving the projectile 3,000 feet per second, never questioning that one foot per second over the other. I worked for many people in a very social gun shop and saw it many times. Sometimes it is difficult to understand the thinking of some center fire cartridge popularity.

A long time ago, back in the 1950s, two cartridges were introduced by Winchester and Remington. Although as similar as peas in a pod, one sold like hotcakes the other sold so poorly that its name had to be changed to keep it on the market.

Strangely, it was the tad faster one that bored the buyer. Of course, I am referring to the very popular .243 Winchester and the re-named Remington. This pair baffled some firearms users and there has always been a handful of shooters who favored the slow-selling Remington offerings. They realized the fundamentals of cartridge design and the importance of case capacity. It was the Remington that had the greater capacity, although not by a big margin. It might have been one grain of powder, but it was more. That resulted in a bit more velocity, which means more kinetic energy. It is this duo that defies the usual higher sales of the faster round, proving that there were factors in the purchase of one of these caliber rifles.

First there was the rifle for which the initial cartridge was chambered. The .243 was the ever-admired model 70. On top of that, there was a reason for the featherweight model 70 outselling the standard weight model. This was unusual but it makes the featherweight rarer and more desirable to today’s collectors. The featherweight also came with a 22-inch barrel, making it the handier rifle or has often been said, the quicker-to-the-shoulder rifle.

Moving to the Remington, it was tied to the one native but a bit ugly 721 series with the stamped-out trigger guard and uncheckered plain jane stock. The 26-inch barrel on the 721 and short-action 722 was fine in the groundhog field but awkward in the deer cover. The 1-in-12 rifling in the Remington wasn’t quite fast enough to stabilize the 100-grain bullet, and the top limit in bullet weight offered by the factories that weighed 90 grains. Again, we find shooters influenced by that 2 inches of barrel and a small 10 grains of bullet weight.

Meanwhile, over in the Winchester part of town, the model 70, shorter by 2 inches of barrel, selling and becoming one of the top cartridges of all time. But on the other hand, because of the longer barrel, the Remington always performed closer to it’s advertised velocity than the Winchester. In plain English, it did what it said it would while the figures for the .243 were stretched a bit. In short, if they had been stretched any further, they surely would have broken.

The .243 still outsells the Remington round but after a rechristening, to be called the 6MM Remington, sales have closed the gap a bit. To be honest, either one makes a great round for the smaller-framed lady hunter or for the youngster. I personally prefer the 6MM, but I like both.