If you had to choose just one cartridge to hunt the broad spectrum of North American big game for the rest of your life,

and it had to be one introduced in the last five years, what would you pick?

Folks, today we are going to take on a time-honored classic endeavor and see if we can make a good argument that

either the 7MMPRC or the 6.8 Western is the best modern all-round cartridge on the market.

We're going to compare the two head to head.

And when the dust settles, we're hoping one or the other kind of emerges as, you know,

the clear choice.

Before we do that, I got to do two things.

I got to give honorable mention to the 280-acly improved, which, you know, as long-time

listeners know, I really believe is one of, if not the best, all-purpose Western hunting cartridges on the market.

But modern as it is in design, it's not a new cartridge, right?

And it's not quite got the buzz that the 7MMPRC and the 6.8 Western do. So we're going to focus on those two.

Thanks for tuning in today, folks. I'm Joseph von Benedict and you are listening to the Backcountry

Hunting podcast. Now before debating any comparison, any comparison, right, It's important to define the topic. For today,

our purpose is to try and determine which is, well, technically, the better cartridge. Also,

which is currently living up to its potential the best, which is an entirely different thing.

And then finally, which is the most successful in the real world here?

We'll use modern engineering standards and design principles to evaluate which is the best,

in that sense.

We'll use current real world ballistics as tested to compare which lives up to its potential.

And we'll use several both objective and subjective

comparable characteristics from, well, local popularity among our home community

...