List your favourite underrated cartridges

Ardent said:
.270 Winchester and .243 Winchester.

The former in particular is popularly discounted by the “in” crowd / 6.5 people, however the .270 remains a modest recoiling, flat shooting game hammer that by its very recipe (light bullets) has resisted the market push to heavy monos. It’s retained it’s bang flop aspects better than most as a result, and is available in every good rifle, and on every hardware store shelf.

The .243 is just a 75% scale .270, and is to the .308 what the .270 is to the .30-06. Another sweet shooting, quick, readily available and disproportionately effective round that was doing the mild but flat shooting thing long before the fancy options came along.

Getting away from readily available, the .250 Savage as the OP mentions, the 257 Roberts, and .257 Weatherby are all inordinately effective and light recoiling. The .30-06 is considered old hat but yet arguably the best rounded non dangerous game round in existence.
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Have a BLR as takedown 18" 358 as a back up and a win 88 carbine 243 for the smaller stuff . 358 is the choice for all situations , motorcycle , 4 wheeler , canoe , light aircraft and of course all spacecraft including catamarans hosting climate idiots
 
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Gatehouse said:
It's surprising how many people think that some of the most popular cartridges of all time are "underrated"

270, 3006, 4570, 30-30, 7x57 etc?
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They are most certainly underrated in a crowd that thinks a snot-nosed, little pizz-ant preschooler named "Credmoor" is Gods gift of thunder and lightning to the others, as though they are all sulpher matches.
 
I seem to like cartridges that are a standard in Europe but are not used much here.
.22 Hornet - Quiet, effective, cheap to reload, & fun to shoot. Good in single shots.
7x57R - I greatly prefer a rimmed cartridge for any single shot rifle. Simpler extractor, more positive extraction, best case design for the application. I'd actually prefer the 7x65R, but don't own one.
7x64 - The .280 has no real reason to exist. The 7x64 was around a few decades sooner, and they are nearly identical. the 7x64 was never loaded down like the original .280 either.
.450-400 N.E. 3" - the most shootable big bore dangerous game double rifle cartridge. Not completely out of place in North America either. Used mine to kill an elk this fall, and a Cape buffalo a couple weeks ago. Actually the factory loaded cartridges were resurrected by Hornady, but rifles are now chambered in European double rifles like Heym, VC, Chapuis, Merkel, Krieghoff, and Sabatti.

I'll give honourable mention to one more, the .25-06. About perfect for pronghorn and mule deer, and what I use it for. Not many rifles chambered for it any more.
 
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just throwin it out there, the 375 winchester , for bigger game than deer-
proberly the 358 winchester and 338 federal in aus for sambar .
an the 257 down under for mid sized game up to red stag.. well over shadowed by 243
 
Gatehouse said:
What is being compensated for?

You sure spend a lot of time thinking about this stuff.
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Hunting season is over, the freezer is full, it is going to be a long winter until the spring turkey season... might as well pour a brandy, stoke the fire and tap on the keyboard... or key"bored."
 
MiG25 said:
Are underrated and unpopular synonyms?
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In this discussion? maybe sometimes. Some good cartridges are unpopular because they were wrong place, wrong time. Some unpopular cartridges are unpopular because there are other ones that do the same thing better/more available etc.
 
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