Some of you may have already read about my experience with the 6.5 Cayuga from a year or two ago. That may or may not have led you to this subject, but if you are seriously looking into the Cayuga as a hunting bullet then I’d recommend reading both articles.
The Cayuga
All Patriot Valley Arms Cayugas are solid copper monolithic bullets, lathe turned to perfection from the same alloy as traditional copper cup bullets. This allows them to be extremely consistent from bullet to bullet, and the CNC turning process also allows their profile to be controlled meticulously. The Cayuga solids boast much higher ballistic coefficients than comparably weighted bullets, but due to their lighter weight from lacking a lead core they can be shot at higher velocities. So to sum it up; higher bc’s and lighter weight make them better for distance shooting and the lot consistency and gentile ogive make them accurate and easy loading.
Earlier this year, I started my second six millimeter project, a 6mm GT for my Desert Tech SRS M2. It took only a few minutes to fall completely in love with the Tiger, so when given the opportunity to test these new Cayuga bullets in it, I wasted no time. The 6mm GT easily pushes hundred grain bullets to the 3,000 fps mark, and the high BC of the Cayuga meant that it would hold onto that velocity and energy for quite a ways.
The Numbers
The 100 grain Cayuga didn’t exactly come with an owners manual, PVA gave me some suggested data to work with which seemed to be spot on. I used a G7 BC of .270 which is very similar to the extremely popular Berger 105gr. I tested the Cayuga to beyond 1400 yards and as far as I shot with it, that .270 lined up perfectly.
Easily Loaded
Once I had the Cayugas in hand, I sat down at the loading bench to get busy. The go to powder for the GT is Varget, and for good reason. But if your reading this in the same era it was written, then you know how hard its been to get certain loading components. Varget was hard to come by, but I had eight pounds of Reloader 17 that I could make work. And boy did it!
The very first load I tried with the Cayugas was a modest charge of RL-17 that produced around 2960 fps from my twenty-four inch barrel. The first five bullets I tested went through nearly the same hole, I shit thee nay. Groups in the .2’s and .3’s were immediately achieved with ZERO load workup or seating depth fiddling. While I do consider myself to be both lucky and handsome, I think the generous curve of the bullets ogive likely bears more credit for the accurate shooting than any luck of my own.
I added a touch more powder to break the big three-o, and left the rest alone. From there I spent the rest of my test shooting validating drop and such to confirm the bc. The end goal here was the same for nearly every project of mine; what can I kill with it?
Hunting Season
The GT had accompanied me on a bear hunt to Montana, no kills were made there so the next opportunity would be the Mule deer hunt in my state of Utah. The Rocky Mountains that I call home are quite spacious, and the steep and deep canyons where we hunt our deer can often stretch for miles. Shots can be anywhere from one hundred yards, out to two or three ridges away. To put it simply, a five, six or seven hundred yard shot on a mule deer buck is about as common as anything. The Gay Tiger loaded with Cayugas had become such a predictably accurate shooter that anything in that realm felt like a chip shot as far as hitting my point of aim. So when opening day arrived, the GT road right next to me, and never left my side. We ended up using it for two separate shots on deer, both of which hang quietly in the shed in my backyard.
The first deer was shot at six-hundred and eighty yards, it was a perfect broadside shot that passed through leaving an inch and a half hole on its way out. The deer staggered about twenty yards before he tipped over.
The second deer was taken a few days later, at a distance just over a thousand yards. He too took a single shot and dropped straight to the ground where he expired. While the second shot may have had less energy than recommended by many, it certainly did the trick just fine.
Broken rib bones, shredded lungs, and bright blood stains against the dry yellow grass are exactly the kind of indicators that good hunters like to judge a bullet’s performance.
Conclusion
Just as I had expected, the 6mm Cayugas are everything I had hoped for. Accurate and flat shooting bullets that make an impressive wound cavity through animals. We often joke that Im going to have to shoot an elk with a 6mm Cayuga if ever I want to find a fired one. But after seeing what I have, it’d have to be really far away, or else I’d have to shoot him length-wise. We killed seven deer last week, just in my group. And the 6mm GT shooting Cayugas killed every bit as well as the larger cartridges used (6.5CM, 260, 308). If you are in need of a solid copper hunting bullet, or if your stuck in California for example, the Cayugas are just the ticket for six-millimeter big game hunting.
-CBM