Shot quite a few with a 260. No 6.5 CM in my cabinet yet. At first I shot 142 smk because they were accurate as hell and had several people tell me they’d do good on deer. That wasn’t my results. Now we’re using 143 ELDX. Not going to lie, most deer do run after being shot. Much better blood trail to follow and very few lost deer (shot placement). I personally have dedicated my 260 to a target rifle and run the AR 10 308/300 WM/338 LM for deer now. The results with the AR 10 are about equal to the 260 running factory 165 SST. Many deer run but tracking is usually easy and they don’t go very far. The 300 is running a 200 ELDX and that thing is a machine at laying down deer. Of course the 338 Lapua does its job as well but that’s an entirely different animal running 300 gr bullets.

I have shot deer past 600 with the 260. The furthest being 1,121 yards. I wouldn’t consider this gun adequate for any distance like that. There just isn’t enough ft lbs of energy to get the job done ethically IMO