After the trip to the range and all the rain on my last hunting trip I feel that even if the only shot’s that I fired were sighers in the field or from the bench I learnt some important things about my new XCR namely

1) It has quite reasonable recoil from the bench but more then a box of ammo and it starts to bruise a bit.
2) In the rain I caries very well and those Hogue grips provide the best feel and the firmest most stable grip on any rifle I have held. No matter how wet or how slippery it got I always had a perfect grip and total rifle control at all times and I just made me feel confident in my outfit no matter the weather.
3) That after all the rain and mud and gunk it wiped clean very easy and showed no signs of having been out in the weather except on the rings that are the only part not stainless.
4) From the shoulder it is very balanced and has very manageable almost borderline pleasant recoil with a lot of push and very little bite.
5) At present I’m getting a little copper fowling near the muzzle but as I have only put 30 odd rounds through it I expect that to disappear as it wears in.
6) And cleaning is a dream.

Zeroing in at the range.

Sounds like a winner. There is not much not to like about the 260. I have had a couple of them but currently am back to shooting the 6.5x55 Mauser. I guess you could call it a cousin to the 260. Good luck down there.

Sounds like a good rifle for poor weather and how did that Kahles scope work out in the rain?...
Best of luck with that 375H&H...

James B.
I like the 260rem a lot I find it does everything a Swede will do more or less the same. I like the Swede more for the 130-160gr pills and the 260 for the 85-120gr pills but I think that has more to do with the rifles I have shot them in. I do consider the 120gr to be the best weight for the 260 and the 160gr the best for the Swede but I love both rounds.

Trailer.
The Kahles was flawless in the rain it never fogged up and even with water dripping from the lens I could still get a picture. On 2X I can see the front sight in line with the vertical post but it doesn’t disturbed the clarity at all and I cant see it at all with the power turned up. On the range I swapped shooting it while I helped a mate zero in a Leupold VXII and VXIII and I could see a big difference between them especially with the VXII and I swore I would never own one after using Kahles scopes for so long.

All in all the big 375H&H is great to shoot in the XCR and the rifle performs very well and I would recomend the combo to anyone after a hard hitting outfit.

The 260 probably does shoot the lighter bullets better as the 6.5x55 was designed for bullets in the 160 grain class. However, mine shoots the 140 grain Hornady SP about the best and id deadly on anything that gets in its way. I have shot the Hornady 160 grain RN for Black Bear and moose at shorter ranges. Say out to 200 yards. I had a 260 in the Savage 110 LH and also the Ruger All Weather. The Rugers magazine box however was so short to seat the bullets out where they should be.

Good to here about the Kahles scope and the rifle of course. I had a feeling you would have a good report for a quality scope under miserable conditions. Hope you didn’t get hit to hard with that storm. Heard it was a bad one...

James B.
I had that problem with a few 260’s that I loaded for some blokes all the magazine’s are to short for the long pointy .264 cal projectiles. I have loaded some 130gr Hornady SST’s at the moment and nearly 2/3 of the projectile is in the case costing me 1.5gr of powder space I get them off just under 2800fps where I can get other 130gr pills at a true 2900 fps. I have decided to load down to 2700 fps now so that both my 260rem with 130gr pills and my 375H&H with 270gr pills will follow roughly the same trajectory.

Trailer.
I jot lucky that cyclone hit the top of Australia and I was down the bottom on the same side but I only got buckets of rain and some strong wind but we had at least on large town pretty well levelled flat I didn’t find out until I got back.