Splendid Isolation

I genuinely do not know what to make of this.

Federal is kicking off 2025 with a bold announcement: it’s “reinventing ammunition.” The company released its new 7mm Backcountry cartridge today, but that’s not even the biggest headline. The Peak Alloy case technology that houses the round is shaking things up even more. 

What wizardry is this?

Engineers were clear that from the beginning, they were working to answer a market call for Magnum velocity out of shorter barrels and tailored to suppressed hunting – all without increasing recoil.

Wait:  building something new in response to actual customer wishes? (Be still, my fainting Marketing heart.)  Are we talking about the gun business?

Anyway, let’s see how they did this:

The physical casing itself is what allowed this round to come to fruition. The case technology, known here as Peak Alloy, is fundamentally different from standard brass casings. According to Federal, the alloy was developed using a proprietary steel alloy that includes other unique elements as a response to United States military solicitations.

The goal is a stronger build that allows Federal to safely increase chamber pressures “far beyond the limits of brass case ammunition, significantly increasing velocity and energy.”

Okay, I get where this is going:  MOAR power and therefore greater velocity coming from the stronger cartridge casing, coupled with lower recoil.  The good news is that they stuck with the tried-and-true 7mm (.284″) boolet instead of reinventing the whole frigging wheel (which would probably have been the case back in the 1990s).

I would love love love to have seen this happen with the 6.5mm boolet — imagine a “new” cartridge casing for my favorite 6.5x55mm Swede — but of course nobody’s going to spend time, money and resources just to please this (my) particular segment of the market.

In any event, these new Wunderkind-Patronen  will of course require a new rifle (as if we couldn’t have predicted that little consequence).

And will these rifles be affordable to our suffering hoi polloi?  Don’t be silly:  just look at the manufacturers who’ve signed on to this little exercise:

…none of whom are renowned for their affordability.  (Although Savage is also slated for an entry, an educated guess will suggest that their guns will likewise be among their existing premium products and not Axios.)

Bah.

Look, I’m sure that this is a great innovation.  But color me skeptical, because at the end of the day, this looks like just another WSSM or Rem Super Magnum product (remember them?  me neither) and yet another attempt to sell more rifles.  There’s nothing wrong with all that — hell, it’s actually a Good Thing, especially in a military context — but it just means that people like myself won’t be participating.

I would be curious, however, to see how this new alloy casing would work in dangerous game calibers such as the 9.3x62mm, .375 H&H or .458 Win Mag, where reduced recoil would be welcomed with open arms.

But that’s never going to happen, is it?

And here’s what I was alluding to in the above post.  It’s all very well to go all gooey-eyed over some new whizz-bang cartridge that does x and y better than the older cartridges did x and y.

But I have to ask myself:  how much better, and at what cost?

I have no doubt that the 7mm Backcountry (what will its abbreviation be, I wonder?  7mm BC?  7mm Back?  7mm BCKTRY?) will perform as advertised:  astounding velocity, greater penetration, less recoil, etc. etc.

But if you’re going to drop a premium-priced new product on the market, couldn’t you just get a proven rifle and cartridge to do almost the same thing — bearing in mind that your quarry is highly unlikely to differentiate a boolet arriving at 1,300 foot-pounder from another arriving at 1,100 ft-lbs.

Even better, you could get an old, reliable rifle (such as a pre-’64 Winchester 70) in traditional garb instead of a show-off “operator” rifle of unproven value.  A rifle such as this custom Model 70, in 9.3x62mm:

…or, if we stick to a 7mm bullet, this Wiebe/Kaye Mauser in 7mm Rem Mag:

…and the latter’s barrel, with no iron sights, can easily be shortened, and threaded to take a suppressor.  (I know, they’re as expensive as hell, at well over seven grand each;  but that’s what you get when you start playing with one-of-a-kind custom rifles.)

Let me tell you, I’d take either one of the above out into the field, and not feel hard done by or undergunned.

And still talking about hunting:  I’ve never been that seriously affected by recoil when hunting (except possibly that time with a .458 Win Mag rifle shooting juiced-up handloads — ow, my shoulder just gave me a twinge at the memory);  and in any event, recoil is most keenly felt when firing lots of rounds on the trot, which doesn’t happen when hunting.

It does matter if you’re doing target shooting, of course, where you will be firing lots either in practice or during the event itself.  And this might be where the 7mm Backcountry round will shine — but will it outshine the target-specific cartridges like 7mm BR or .280 Ackley?  I’m not so sure, and nobody will be until we see actual comparisons.

All I can say is that the newbie is going to have to work hard to beat the established players.