You’re a .243/.264 steel plate shooter. Likely pretty good too, probably well above average, based on the forums you frequent, and the usual theme of your posts. CGN is not my only hangout either.
But you’ve never held a tag. You’ve never recovered a bullet and seen terminal performance. You’ve never had your finger on the safety about to take an animals life. You’ve never hauled meat through grizz country. You’ve never flown in on a once in a lifetime hunt and had an opportunity for a 180 muley, 12 year old sheep, or 230 moose.
This is pretty far from your wheelhouse. OP has field experience and is a claimed proficient shooter. I’m an average to slightly above shooter, and can be surgical with a 9lb braked WSM.
You immediately call “noobs can’t shoot magnums. Get a Swede” followed by “375 chey”, because you think you’re funny.
Then you regurgitate the same old s*** MDS guys say, similar how you regurgitate the same old s*** your buddies say about IBI. Nothing you said about poor shot placement is wrong. It’s been said a million times before. Same as every other thing you regurgitate.
The 6.5 PRC has been f***ng hammering massive game all over North America and Africa, at ridiculous ranges. But it is not a magic do all cartridge in all situations. Hunting big game is not something achieved or solved with a ballistics calculator.
OP, it’s not that hard to get proficient with magnums if you want too. Brakes help for sure. And you won’t catch me dead in grizz country smelling like a carcass with a 143eldx that’s famous for not expanding at close range, or 156 target bullet.
I've hunted and shot white tail deer, geese, duck, pheasants, and various other game. I don't call myself a hunter because it's been about 4 years since I shot my last deer, and have always gone under the tutelage of others. As you know, hunting is much more then just pulling the trigger and killing an animal. There are many around me that are very experienced hunters, and are much more deserving of the title "hunter" then I am. I want to learn much more about the craft of hunting before I call myself a hunter, and it's a deep dive that I want to get into.
Most shooters do not shoot magnums well, that's a fact. Especially hunters, that spend little time practicing the craft of shooting. The more a rifle recoils, the more it will exploit any flaw in your fundamentals, which means that there's a higher chance of the projectile not landing in the place that you intended. This is also amplified by distance.
A 6.5mm cartridge is much more forgiving to shoot then a 7mm or .30 cal Magnum. A 6.5mm projectile landing in the correct spot will generally have better performance then a 7mm or .30 cal landing in the wrong spot. In the Nordic countries, 6.5x55 has been used to take big game successfully for generations.
Anyways, that's just my opinion as a stranger on the internet that spends a lot of time shooting rifles. Just trying to provide a slightly different perspective as to why something other then a magnum may be beneficial to the OP. I personally don't think magnums are a great answer to a lot of our hunting needs in North America, and they cause a lot of issues in shooters that don't spend a lot of time practicing. That said, magnums have their place, and for better or worse, the OP will make their decision. North Americans have a fascination with being "over gunned", and people that spend a lot of time training hunters, such as Phil & Caylen, have commented on how detrimental this mentality can be.
PS - IBI did have initial issues with QC when they got started, they admitted to this. I don't recommend products to people that I know have issues. That said, IBI has supposedly rectified this, and I haven't brought it up in over a year. I also have no interest in rehashing that, because it serves no purpose at this point.
