Seemingly almost universally owners of a Mannlicher-Schoenauer or Steyr rifle chambered in 6.5x54 mm M-S seem to use a projectile of around 160 grs in a Round Nose type design.

Is this true?

Do you use any spitzer projectiles in your M-S or Steyr?

And how do they perform? Do they feed from the magazine well? Are they accurate? Please give details. I'd be happy to hear otherwise than what I think.

My assumption is that non round nose projectiles may not feed as well from the magazine(?). And possibly the free bore rifling in the chambers is cut to accomodate the long 160 gr round nose projectiles (?).

In previous times, the heavy long round nose projectiles probably were "modern" in comparison to other cartridges of the time. And a good bullet for use against medium sized game, deer, plains game antelopes, boar etc.

However today, many 6.5 mm users like to use a bullet with a better ballistic coefficient, and there is no doubt, the 160 gr as the heaviest available bullet weight in a 6.5 mm is heavier than many 6.5 mm users would like to use. The 120 gr weight to me seems to be an ideal game bullet weight for a 6.5 mm, and the weight range of 100 to 140 gr far more common to modern day users.

Perhaps one reason the 6.5x54 mm and 6.5x53R are lacklustre in demand for 6.5mm choices today?

Your thoughts and comments are appreciated.