I've been kicking around getting a Mark X Mini-Mauser action and building a 6.5 Grendal on the action with the 7.62 x 39 bolt. A little Grendal bolt action rifle would be nifty for a really long walk. I'd stoke it up with something it likes in the 125gr Nosler partition to 129gr Hornady Interlock range and be ready for careful and deliberate harvesting of about anything. The COAL for the magazine on this is 0.005" short of the max COAL for the Grendal; I can live with that, since I would only handload for it anyway.

The 6.8 Rem would be OK, too but the reasonable bullet weights in that caliber are too light for my taste - if it would handle a 130gr well, that would be another story. I realize that there are some specialty bullets starting to appear for it, but sectional density cannot be magicked with conventional lead core bullets; it takes weight (mass) to get a higher SD. (Maybe with carbide or DU cores, but...) Anyway, building a 6.8 Rem on a Mini Mark X would take machining to open up the bolt face of the 223 bolt and extractor and I'm not keen to mess with that until someone else does it first - several times.

These are both really aimed at M16 magazine parameters, so a spare upper reciever in either caliber for someone who already has an AR15 would be well worth the investment, IMHO. The pundits pontificate that the 6.8 is a tick better in QCB (slightly better frontal area and slightly less recoil) and that the Grendal is superior at long range. No personal data, but I know what a 6.5 at those modest velocities does - kills things dead with no fuss; penetration is almost always thru and thru. I would be much more confident of taking a Wapiti with the Grendal than with the 6.8. Both should do fine on deer and smaller critters.

But I can't really think of a good excuse to do this... neither caliber will do anything that something else I already have won't do better. Be nice if my wife gets one built for me - she does things like that from time to time <grin>.

Tom

(forgive my spelling - it's extra-awful tonight and I'm too lazy to go fix it)