Reeder Custom Guns - they say copying is the finest form of flattery. If

that is so, then we have really been flattered lately. Sharps flattered us by copying our 257 Raptor and now Bill Wilson has flattered us by copying our 30 Raptor as his 300 Hamm'r. In a magazine article they compared it to the 300 Black Out, a cartridge that J.D. Jones was flattered by from his 300 Whisper. Funny, I always thought that was called stealing.

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It is all about the money. And status . Pete

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cartridge to another stolen cartridge and write it up in an article. And I guess I am mostly surprised that gun folks would do that.

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257 Firecat differ that much from the old 25 Souper?

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was never registered as an actual cartridge. Dave Manson, who builds our reamers and registers our cartridges for us said there was not one with these dimensions, period. If it has been a proprietary cartridge he would not have been able to build a reamer for it.

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I always understood that the Souper was a .308 necked down to 25 caliber with no other dimensional changes (or .243 necked up to 25 would work too. A very simple wildcat, and one that many well regarded gunsmiths considered a worthwhile endeavour. I first learned of the Souper when I asked Gale McMillian to help me choose a good first wildcat when I was ready for the challenge. Gale was a .25 caliber fan, and while I liked his suggestion of the Souper, I ended up going with a .243 Ackley Improved for more velocity and less case work (after forming).

Sounds like Gary’s cartridge has a different shoulder angle...not a full 40 degree improvement, but significantly more than the standard 20 degree of an unmolested .308

I’m curious how much body taper is present...to me, it sounds like an improved (and formally registered) version of what we in the midwest called the Souper.

MQ1

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and know nothing about it. When I come up with an idea, I run the numbers by Dave Manson, our reamer maker, as he has the books of cartridges and if it is a proprietary cartridge, and has been done before he can't legally build me a reamer for it. There have been a few thru the years that he has told me it couldn't be done as it was already registered to someone else. But the 257 Firecat has not been done before. The case is straight with a 38 degree shoulder. We tried a 308 but lost quite a bit more neck in fireforming, so I stayed with the 243 case.
And a cartridge with these dimensions has not been registered.

It is amazing that when I come up with a new cartridge there is always somebody that knows more and tries to claim that I am copying another cartridge.

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There certainly is no shortage of people that wildcat cartridges, and it is inevitable that there will be similarities, especially when designing around common cartridges as a base. “Improving” them in an Ackley way is now a pretty common way of eeking a couple hundred fps out of a standard cartridge. What is not so common is doing the homework to ensure that it feeds in an autoloader from a magazine, and extracts as well.

As an interesting fact, Gale told me that they called it a Souper because loaded full tilt with light bullets, a boiler room shot would turn a coyote’s insides to soup. Having shot a bunch of coyotes and groundhogs with a 25-06...I’m sure the description was correct,

MQ1

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they say copying is the finest form of flattery. If

Sad, but honesty is a dying commodity.

I agree SPB in today’s age

What is this world coming to....

that takes a lot of gall. To compare one stolen

I don't care what anyone says that just

Pisses me off!

So how does the

I have never heard of the 25 Souper and whatever it was, it

Souper

like I told the other fellow I have never heard of a Souper

Wildcats