Originally Posted by
VinnyQC
The Creedmoor isn't a bad hunting round, far from it. And yes, it will punch through a larger, bigger, meaner animal than the grendel at the same distance. From that point of view, you could say it is a "better" hunting cartridge than the grendel.
However, it (the CM) was designed with target shooting in mind, while the grendel was designed for hunting. When hornady designed the CM, their goal was to create the best cartridge for target shooting. When Alexander Arms designed the grendel, their thought process was pretty much "how could we make a suitable cartridge to hunt with an AR-15?". Technically, I'd say both were very successful in reaching their respective goals. The CM is one of the best target shooting cartridge as of this moment (it's got the performance of a 300WM with the recoil of a 308Win, it's a marvelous!), and the grendel can easily take out anything large as a deer or less, upto about 800m, in a round the size of a 223.
As for why I believe the OP would be better served with a grendel upper:
1-He already has a suitable lower, so he saves $$$, and he said he need to save some cash for his purchase;
2-As you said, smaller and lighter platform, which is great when hunting;
3-Most important of all: it will do what he wants to do, which is to varmint and hunt.
If OP wants to hunt larger animals at longer distance, I'd suggest 308 over CM mostly due to availability of ammos (you can get 308 at wal-mart and CT, never seen CM outside of specialized hunting/shooting stores), price of ammos (can get plinking ammos for less than 1$/round in 308, not so much in CM), and in the end, pretty much the same effectiveness. I see very little hunting you can do with a CM that you couldn't do with a 308.
Of course, the argument could be made that since he already has the MV to hunt varmints, he could go for a MH.
Personnaly, I think an almost perfect setup would be a MV in 6.5 grendel for hunting varmint up to deer, and a bolt action 300wsm for deer up to elephant. Those 2 rifles and you've covered pretty much any hunting in north america.