The .308 Winchester is a smokeless powder rimless bottlenecked rifle cartridge widely used for hunting, target shooting, police, military, and personal protection applications globally. It is similar but not identical to the 7.62×51mm NATO cartridge.
A wildcat cartridge, often shortened to wildcat, is a custom cartridge for which ammunition and/or firearms are not mass-produced. These cartridges are often created in order to optimize a certain performance characteristic of an existing commercial cartridge.
The .243 Winchester (6×52mm) is a popular sporting rifle cartridge. Developed as a versatile short action cartridge to hunt both medium game and small game alike, it "took whitetail hunting by storm" when introduced in 1955, and remains one of the most popular whitetail deer cartridges. It is also commonly used for harvesting blacktail deer, pronghorns and mule deer with heavier rounds, and is equally suited to varmint hunting with lighter rounds. The .243 is based on a necked down .308 Winchester, introduced only three years earlier. Expanding monolithic copper bullets of approximately 80 to 85 grains or traditional lead rounds of 90 to 105 grains with controlled expansion designs are best suited for hunting medium game, while lighter rounds are intended for varmints.
The .270 Winchester is a rifle cartridge developed by Winchester Repeating Arms Company in 1923 and unveiled in 1925 as a chambering for their bolt-action Model 54 to become arguably the flattest shooting cartridge of its day, only competing with the .300 Holland & Holland Magnum, also introduced in the same year.
The .30-40 Krag was a cartridge developed in the early 1890s to provide the U.S. armed forces with a smokeless powder cartridge suited for use with modern small-bore repeating rifles to be selected in the 1892 small arm trials. Since the cartridge it was replacing was the .45-70 Government, the round was considered small-bore at the time. The design selected was ultimately the Krag–Jørgensen, formally adopted as the M1892 Springfield. It was also used in M1893 and later Gatling guns.
Considered by many as the most balanced of the "quarter bores" for hunting medium-sized game, the .25-06 Remington remained in obscurity as a wildcat cartridge for nearly half a century before being standardized by Remington in 1969.
The .458 Winchester Magnum is a belted, straight-taper cased, big five game rifle cartridge. It was introduced commercially in 1956 by Winchester and first chambered in the Winchester Model 70 African rifle. It was designed to compete against the .450 Nitro Express and the .470 Nitro Express cartridges used in big bore British double rifles. The .458 Winchester Magnum remains one of the most popular large game cartridges, and most major ammunition manufacturers offer a selection of .458 ammunition.
The .300 Winchester Magnum is a belted, bottlenecked magnum rifle cartridge that was introduced by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company in 1963. The .300 Winchester Magnum is a magnum cartridge designed to fit in a standard rifle action. It is based on the .375 H&H Magnum, which has been blown out, shortened, and necked down to accept a .30 caliber (7.62 mm) bullet.
The .444 Marlin (10.9×57mmR) is a rifle cartridge designed in 1964 by Marlin Firearms and Remington Arms. It was designed to fill in a gap left by the older .45-70 when that cartridge was not available in any new lever-action rifles; at the time it was the largest lever-action cartridge available. The .444 resembles a lengthened .44 Magnum and provides a significant increase in velocity. It is usually used in the Marlin 444 lever-action rifle. Currently Marlin who is now owned by Ruger Firearms does not offer the 444 chambered in any of their rifles. It remains to be seen when or if they will bring the chambering back into production.
The .338 Winchester Magnum is a .338 in (8.6 mm) caliber, belted, rimless, bottlenecked cartridge introduced in 1958 by Winchester Repeating Arms. It is based on the blown-out, shortened .375 H&H Magnum. The .338 in (8.6 mm) is the caliber at which medium-bore cartridges are considered to begin. The .338 Winchester Magnum is the first choice among professional brown bear guides in Alaska to back up clients where a powerful stopping caliber is required on charging bears. It is also the most popular medium-bore cartridge in North America and has the most widely available choice in rifles among medium bore rifles. The action length is the same as a .30-06, and most major rifle manufacturers in the United States chamber rifles for the cartridge including the semi-automatic Browning BAR Mk II Safari, making it a very powerful combination against charging dangerous game. The cartridge was intended for larger North American big-game species and has found use as for the hunting of thin-skinned African plains-game species.
The 7mm Remington Magnum rifle cartridge was introduced as a commercially available round in 1962, along with the new Remington Model 700 bolt-action rifle. It is a member of the belted magnum family that is directly derived from the venerable .375 H&H Magnum. The original purpose of the belted magnum concept taken from the .300 H&H Magnum and .375 H&H Magnum, was to provide precise headspace control, since the sloping shoulders, while easing cartridge extraction, were unsuitable for this purpose. Improved cartridge extraction reliability is desirable while hunting dangerous game, in particular when a fast follow-up shot is required. The 7mm Remington Magnum is based on the commercial .264 Winchester Magnum, .338 Winchester Magnum, and .458 Winchester Magnum, which were based on the same belted .300 H&H Magnum and .375 H&H Magnum cases, trimmed to nearly the same length as the .270 Weatherby Magnum.
The .260 Remington cartridge was introduced by Remington in 1997. Many wildcat cartridges based on the .308 Winchester case had existed for years before Remington standardized this round.
The .358 Winchester is a .35 caliber rifle cartridge based on a necked up .308 Winchester created by Winchester in 1955. The cartridge is also known in Europe as the 9.1x51mm.
The .375 Ruger (9.5×65.5mm) is a rimless, standard-length rifle cartridge designed for the hunting of large, dangerous game. It is designed to provide an increase in performance over the .375 H&H cartridge, yet to be chambered in a standard-length action rifle. The cartridge was designed in partnership, by Hornady and Ruger. In 2007, it was released commercially and chambered in the Ruger Hawkeye African and the Ruger Hawkeye Alaskan rifles.
The 7-30 Waters cartridge was originally a wildcat cartridge developed by author Ken Waters in 1976 to give better performance to lever-action rifle shooters than the parent .30-30 Winchester cartridge, by providing a higher velocity and flatter trajectory with a smaller, lighter bullet. By 1984, Winchester introduced a Model 94 rifle chambered for the 7-30 Waters, establishing it as a commercial cartridge. In 1986, Thompson/Center began chambering 10-inch, 14-inch, and 20-inch Contender barrels for the cartridge.
The 6.5mm Creedmoor (6.5×48 mm), designated 6.5 Creedmoor by SAAMI, 6.5 Creedmoor by the C.I.P. or 6.5 CM or 6.5 CRDMR for short, is a centerfire rifle cartridge introduced by Hornady in 2007. It was developed by Hornady senior ballistics scientist Dave Emary in partnership with Dennis DeMille, the vice-president of product development at Creedmoor Sports, hence the name. The cartridge is a necked-down modification of the .30 Thompson Center.
The .458 Lott is a .458 caliber rifle cartridge designed for the purpose of hunting large, thick-skinned dangerous game animals in Africa. It is based on the full length .375 H&H Magnum case blown out and shortened to 2.800 inches (71.1 mm).
The .338 Marlin Express is a cartridge developed by Marlin Firearms and Hornady. It is based on the .376 Steyr with a goal to duplicate the venerable .30-06 Springfield's performance in a cartridge compatible with lever-action firearms. The cartridge uses a slightly shorter, rimmed case to function in lever-action rifles with tubular magazines. As introduced in Hornady's LEVERevolution line of cartridges, it follows the design logic of the .308 Marlin Express which preceded it. The .338MX fires heavier .338 caliber bullets than the .308 Marlin Express at roughly the same velocity. It is chambered in Marlin's Model 338MX and 338MXLR rifles using the Marlin Model 336 action.
The .500 S&W Magnum or 12.7×41mmSR is a .50 caliber semi-rimmed revolver cartridge developed by Cor-Bon in partnership with the Smith & Wesson "X-Gun" engineering team for use in the Smith & Wesson Model 500 X-frame revolver and introduced in February 2003 at the SHOT Show. From its inception, it was intended to be the most powerful handgun cartridge to date, with the capacity to harvest all North American game species. While more powerful handgun cartridges, such as the .500 Bushwhacker, have emerged since, they are only available in custom firearms at this time, and the .500 S&W remains the most powerful production handgun cartridge.
The .277 Wolverine is a wildcat cartridge. It is a multi-purpose mid-power cartridge with increased ballistic performance over the AR-15's traditional .223 Remington cartridge requiring only a new barrel to upgrade/convert any 5.56-based firearm to .277 Wolverine.
