A while ago I finished building a rifle chambered in 6mm Dasher after months of choosing components and waiting on parts availability. This rifle is built on a Falkor Defense MT7 action with a 26 inch, stainless steel Proof Research pre-fit barrel. It rides in an MPA Hybrid Chassis and wears a Vortex Razor HD 5-20×50 scope. Additionally, I had the chassis Cerakoted in copper suede color because…why not?
Overall this rifle has been a sweet shooter; however, it is BEEFY! All together it tips the scales just over 16 lbs unloaded. It’s a bit stupid to carry around, but with the small 6mm Dasher cartridge it leads to negligible recoil, easy shot calling, and fast follow up shots.
To feed this behemoth, obviously you don’t cruise to your local gun store and find scores of 6 Dasher factory options. I reload nearly all of my own ammo, so this wasn’t a factor in my cartridge choice. I was excited to try the 105 grain Berger Hybrid Target bullets as they’re supposed to deliver excellent long range ballistics while being easy to “tune” to the rifle. I certainly wasn’t disappointed and quickly found a load that delivered 2750 FPS with consistent 1/2 MOA accuracy. From online research, it seems that I could push these bullets faster as well as see tighter groups, but I prefer using the rifle to shoot versus burning hours and dollars chasing the most “perfect” load.
For this rifle’s purpose in life, I’m using it to put holes in paper, bang steel, and chase coyotes/prairie dogs. So far, it’s performed exceptionally well, with the caveat of coyotes. Knowing that these Berger bullets aren’t hunting bullets, I still figured the target style bullet would zap coyotes with no issue. Unfortunately, after shooting a handful, I realized they weren’t doing the trick as I had hoped. Ranging from 80 to 425 yards, my bullets pin-holed right through the coyotes leaving fatal, but not immediately so, wounds. Every dog took multiple shots to kill or ran off leaving a blood trail across the prairie.
At the end of the day, this rifle is a dream to shoot and it will be burning primers/powder for a long time. I’ll be switching to Hornady ELD-X bullets, and I hope they shoot as well as the Bergers do. I hate to change from such a great bullet, but the Hornady’s should also deliver good accuracy along with better terminal ballistics as a hunting bullet.
~Chris
John1911.com
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- 6mm Dasher Build - June 24, 2024
