Rifle Bullet/Cartridge Guide

If you’ve read our basic handgun bullet guide, you know the routine. This isn’t an all inclusive guide covering all aspects of every rifle round out there. I leave that task to Wikipedia. What I’ve done is determine the most popular rifle rounds and then giving a quick reference for those. There are just too many rounds to cover and some of them are so obscure that only ammo hipsters like TJ would have even heard about them.

Unlike handgun ammo which are all useful for “defense & target shooting”, rifle cartridges are very specific to certain tasks. As such, I’ve included a “Useful For” category in addition to the pros and cons.

The .22LR used to be the tiny hunting round but the .17 Hornady Magnum Rimfire (HMR) has usurped that title. With an average velocity of 2,550 feet per second, as opposed to the .22LR’s pokey 1,500 fps average, this is a zippy and very flat shooting round.

Useful for: Plinking, Varmints

Pros: Flat trajectory, long range and very high velocity make this a very devastating round for varmint hunting.

Cons: So devastating that it’s almost too powerful for smaller game. While it carries a great amount of speed and range, the power drops off very fast. It’s also a rather expensive rimfire round.

The granddaddy of rifle rounds. Heck, it even has “rifle” in the name. While there are countless .22LR pistols on the market, none of them allow this rimfire round to perform like a rifle does. This round stays deadly at far greater distances than most people can accurately shoot. I’d be willing to bet any amount of money that pretty much every pro rifle shooter started with a .22LR.

Useful For: Plinking, Varmint Hunting

Pros: Cheap and plentiful (under normal circumstances). Even with the shortage, bulk boxes of .22LR are available online for super cheap prices. The guns that shoot this round are plentiful and cheap as well. Every collection needs to have a .22LR rifle in it. Did I mention there’s zero recoil?

Cons: Very unreliable rounds if you go with the cheaper brands. It’s also a very dirty round so have a good cleaning kit.

If you own an AR-15, it probably shoots this round. The 5.56 NATO round is used by militaries around the world. Whether it’s the hot 5.56 or it’s hunting focused twin, the .223, these rounds are inexpensive and easy to find. You can walk into a Walmart and buy a box. It’s got a great range and surprisingly little recoil. The bullet is still a .22 caliber round but it’s got a significant amount of powder behind it. Word of advice: if you have the choice between a 5.56 AR and a .223 AR, always go for the 5.56. You can shoot both 5.56 and .223 in an AR-15 chambered for 5.56 however you can only shoot .223 in a .223 chambered AR. This is because the 5.56 is a hotter round and sometimes the .223 rifles just won’t handle the extra pressure.

Good for: Medium to small game, defense

Pros: Relatively inexpensive and easy to find. Low recoil and good power.

Cons: It’s a tiny round so many states won’t allow you to hunt larger game with it.

As best as I can tell, one could describe this as a “Jack of Many Trades” round. If you go with some of the lighter bullets (less than 90 grains, for example), it could be used for varminting. If you went with the above 90 grain rounds, you can take down deer, hogs and even smaller bear. This round has been here since the 1950’s and pretty much every major manufacturer makes a rifle chambered in .243.

Useful for: Varminting, Deer, Bear, Hogs

Pros: Versatile round. Lots of rifle options

Cons: Still on the low end of the hunting rounds for larger game.

Based off the 30-03 cartridge, this is an excellent hunting round and it’s particularly effective when used with fragmenting or hollow points. Many of the .270 Win options have rounded tips which makes this a great choice for those that like hunting with lever action rifles.

Useful for: Deer, elk, moose, lever action rifles

Pros: This round has been here for a while so you have many rifle choices for it. Shoots with a very flat trajectory.

Cons: It’s not a particularly exciting round. While not a bad choice, there are a lot that are better and a lot that are worse. It’s just kind of…there…as a choice. While there is some variety in bullet choice, the .308 has many more options.

If you have an AK-47, you’re loading it with this round. It’s a powerful round with a pretty nice sized bullet. It’s not limited to AK’s, however, as there are a lot of rifles and carbines available that are chambered for this cartridge. From a ballistic standpoint, the 7.62×39 has about the same ballistic performance as the 30-30!

Useful For: Whitetail and smaller game, defense, overthrowing/enforcing Soviet regimes.

Pros: Lots of power, cheap and plentiful surplus ammo (if you don’t mind dealing with corrosive primers)

Cons: While there are rifle options beyond the AK, it’s not exactly an ideal round to use outside of the AK. You also have the constant temptation to yell “WOLVERINES!!!” whenever you fire it (although this could be go in the “Pro” category as well).

Take the 7.62×51 NATO rifle and tweak it for commercial use and you have the .308 Winchester. While these rounds are extremely similar, they don’t have the interchangeability that the 5.56 and .223 rounds have. The .308 Win has a lot more pressure than the 7.62 NATO and there are some small case length differences that can lead to…less than desirable results. Aside from that, this is the most popular rifle round in the world. There’s very few animals this round won’t take down and it’s also the de facto sniper round the world over.

Useful for: Frankly, it would be easier to list what it isn’t useful for.

Pros: Plentiful ammo (it was always on the shelf locally during the panic), decent recoil and you can hunt everything in the US with it….

Cons: …as long as it’s within 300 yards. This round doesn’t have the ballistic efficiency that other rounds have and suffers a pretty sharp drop approaching 300 yards. You can make 1000 yards shots with it, mind you, and people regularly use it for even longer distances. There are better rounds for reaching out that far, however.

Take a .308 and put some stank on it: that’s the .300 Win Mag. Any time the word “magnum” is used in a title, you know it’s going to have a bigger boom. Where a .308 will put holes in paper at 1000 yards, the .300 Win Mag will put holes in pretty much anything at that range.

Useful for: big game, long range

Pros: If you want power, this has got it.

Cons: It’s going to kick a lot more than the .308 which will beat you up at the range. When you’re talking long distance, flinching from the power can really throw off your shot.Add Content…

When you hear this round mentioned, there is one rifle that is always associated with it: the Mosin Nagant. While there are a few other guns that use this round, no one cares about them. This is a giant round that is fired from a $200 antique Russian rifle. It makes a big fireball and puts a smile on the shooter’s face. Fun fact: This is the oldest round still in combat service. Also, another fun fact, the “R” in “7.62x54R” stands for “Rimmed” not “Russian” as the casing has a small rim around the base.

Useful for: large game, fun at the range, defending Mother Russia

Pros: Absurdly cheap surplus rounds available in mass (again, as long as you don’t mind dealing with corrosive primers) and an absurdly cheap, yet very good rifle that shoots it. Every gun owner should have a Mosin.

Cons: While very powerful, it isn’t as powerful as you would think. The 30-06 round vastly outperforms this 7.62x54R while using a similar sized casing.

This one has some nice history. It was the first small-bore rifle cartridge designed for that new fangled “smokeless powder” stuff. It was also the first cartridge for the Winchester Model 1894 lever action hunting rifle.

Useful for: deer, moose, elk and most other big game

Pros: Light recoil. Perfect round for lever actions

Cons: Not much in the way of range. Just barely adequate for the bigger big game.

While there are a lot of popular and well known cartridges, the Thirty-Aught-Six is one of the few that can truly be called legendary. This was the US military’s primary rifle and machine gun round for over 50 years. It was also the round used by the equally legendary M1 Garand. Today, it’s a very popular hunting round and one of the most versatile rifle cartridges ever made.

Useful for: Hunting everything. Everything? Everything.

Pros: Powerful round that will take down any game you put in front of it.

Cons: The recoil is almost as legendary as the round itself. Also, while possible to use, there are far better choices for long distance shooting.

What a minute, what are these revolver rounds doing on a rifle cartridge guide? Believe it or not, these mangum rounds are very popular hunting rounds as well! Admittedly, more so with the .44 Magnum but the .357 can hold its own well with medium sized game. If you’re using .44 Magnum, you can hunt any animal that North America can throw at you. There are a large number of lever action rifles that are chambered in this size but lever actions are pretty much the only rifles chambered for these rounds.

Useful for: Large and medium game.

Pros: Easy ammo to come by. You can have a pistol in the same caliber and buy ammo in bulk.

Cons: Not much in the way of rifle choices if you don’t like lever action. Your range is also very limited.

Now we’re getting into some long distance relationships. The .338 Lapua Magnum was developed from the ground up for military snipers and it’s performance data really shows. This round holds the world record for longest confirmed kill at 2,707 yards. It’s not just for snipers and long distance competitors either. This is an excellent hunting round and will take down just about every game animal out there.

Useful for: hunting, long distance competition

Pros: There aren’t many rounds that can outperform this in terms of distance.

Cons: The cheapest I box can find at the time of this writing is a 20 round box for $80. It’s not a cheap round and the guns that shoot it are expensive as well. This isn’t a weekend plinker.

If you like to hunt the elusive Northern Small Block Engine at distances greater than a mile (which, frankly, is the only safe distance considering the Small Block’s aggressive temperament), the .50 BMG is your round of choice. The BMG stands for “Browning Machine Gun” and this round was specifically for the military M2 machine gun. At some point, someone said “hey, we have this super big (5.5 inch) cartridge that can punch through tanks and walls and required a mounted machine gun in order to fire….I wonder if we could shoot it out of a rifle.” Boy did they. This is a terrifying round to shoot and few ranges can even handle it.

Useful for: long range competition. Varminting (just kidding. This really isn’t a hunting round.)

Pros: The weight of the bullet reduces the effect of wind. The sound and recoil sends everyone around you ducking for cover.

Cons: Expensive. Very very expensive. While there are .50 BMG rounds available as surplus, they’re not as well suited for competition as purpose built ammo and those are around $70 for a 10 pack.