in the Western United States. At present Remington, Winchester, HSM, and DoubleTap Ammunition produce ammunition for this cartridge. Manufacturers offer a bullet at . This ammunition has a maximum point blank range of when sighted in at . Some ammunition offers premium Nosler Partition and Accubond bullets driven at and through a barrel. While readily available factory ammunition for the cartridge is for the most part fairly basic, handloaders can gain a step up in performance with bullets with better ballistic coefficients and weights to extend the performance of the cartridge. For this reason, this cartridge is better suited for shooters who are willing to make their own ammunition rather than those who purchase over the counter ammunition. Reception The .264 Winchester Magnum main competition comes from the various 7mm cartridges such as the 7mm Remington Magnum, 7mm Weatherby Magnum, the .270 Winchester Short Magnum, .270 Weatherby Magnum, 6.5mm Remington Magnum and the .257 Weatherby Magnum cartridges in North America and the cartridges such as the 6.5×68mm in Europe. Due to the over crowded nature of the market in which the cartridge competes, popularity has been on the wane. In particular, the 7mm Remington Magnum release in 1962 led to the cartridge's poor reception by the shooting public. The 7mm Remington Magnum shoots almost as flat as the .264 Winchester Magnum but launches a larger diameter, heavier bullet generating more energy than the .264 Winchester Magnum. Furthermore, the 7mm Remington Magnum benefits from a vast range of compatible bullets due in large part to the popularity of the 7mm caliber while the .264 was something of an oddity and a rather new caliber in North America. Ballistically it is almost identical to the 6.5×68mm (also known incorrectly as the 6.5×68 RWS, 6.5×68 Schüler or the 6.5×68 Express Vom Hofe) and the 6.5×63 Messner Magnum. The .264 Winchester Magnum is an excellent, potentially accurate, very flat-shooting cartridge capable of taking any game in the lower 48 US states, and one of the most powerful of all cartridges. When loaded with bullets at a muzzle velocity of it is an adequate round for deer out to beyond provided that the hunter is capable of such longer shots. Background The .264 Win. Mag., like many magnum rounds, can wear out barrel throats more rapidly than lower pressure and lower velocity non-magnum cartridges, especially when fired rapidly, which heats up the steel and hastens