I “grew up” in long range shooting first with a 30-06 sporting rifle, then a rebarreled 7x57, then eventually a 7RM R700 Sendero. At the time, early 2000’s, I thought that the 7RM was the pinnacle of long range shooting… thankfully I was swiftly and not-so-politely corrected by more experienced and knowledgeable long range competitors as soon as I started taking my rifles from cattle pastures onto competition firing lines. At the time, my cousins and uncles and I were hanging old truck hoods and doors on fence posts, then driving away in a flatbed pickup with a Leupold rangefinder which could only range about 300yrds, leapfrogging the truck farther and farther away to be able to reach 1000-1200yrds. And we thought we were cool when we heard the massive truck doors and hoods “thunk” as bullets punched through them. Today, I’d do the same on targets less than 1/4 the size with less than half of the powder, and way, way less recoil.

I will defend, however, the 7RM is quite capable as a longer distance hunting cartridge, and I especially enjoyed it for dispatching coyotes at extreme distances. Today, I wouldn’t buy or build any belted magnum - I do have one 300win mag left, only because it can’t fit a 300PRC in the mag box or out of the ejection port, else I would have rebarreled it already. For anything I would have done with 7RM, I now use 6.5 PRC. My wife still has a 7RM barrel for one of her rifles, but I’m thinking it might get swapped for 7 PRC next year.

But a 140-160grn bullet at 3000-3200fps certainly is a viable answer to a lot of questions.