If you’re like most folks that enjoy staying up-to-date with all the latest news in the firearms community, you’ve probably noticed a lot of hype around the 6.5 Creedmoor round in recent years. Hornady developed the round in 2007 to offer match shooters an “off the shelf” ammo that was reasonable priced yet remained competitive against custom hand loads. This round has given folks the opportunity to get their foot in the door when it comes to match shooting. As with most long distance match rounds, the 6.5 Creedmoor can be found offered on plenty of manufacturers’ bolt action platforms, but more and more manufacturers are finding a way to offer the gun in a semi-automatic platform.

Insert Smith & Wesson and the M&P 10 Performance Center rifle. Smith chose to skip the door-buster, economy, base model rifle in this caliber and send it straight to the Performance Center and for that I applaud them. After all, it is a match round. Looking at this rifle out of the box, it is almost ready to shoot. You’ve got a Magpul fixed stock, Magpul MOE+ grip, 15” M-LOK rail, 20” barrel (5R rifling), 10 round PMAG, and threaded muzzle. In case you’re wondering, the 6.5 Creedmoor uses most of the same parts as a 308 Winchester including bolt carrier group and magazine. Likely, you’ll want to add a scope, one piece scope mount, bipod, muzzle brake, and possibly a new trigger; but those are optional pending your application with the rifle. For all you lefties, the gun is also ambidextrous right out of the box.

I was lucky enough to shoot this rifle recently along with about 100 other folks at a range day event held by Dance’s Sporting Goods and it truly impressed. The S&W representative had the rifle dialed in with a Vortex Viper PST scope at 300 yards and hitting 10” steel was laughable it was so easy. We eventually decided we would up the challenge and set up clay targets at 300 yards and let folks shoot at those. Even shooting at 4.25” targets at 300 yards within the first hour of even seeing this rifle, we were all hitting center mass and disintegrating these clays into orange dust.

If you need a better reason to add this rifle to your collection, consider making it one of your deer rifles. Hornady added the 6.5 Creedmoor caliber to their American Whitetail lineup this past year and the round will perform well for just about any deer hunt. If you hunt powerlines or long fields on a windy day, it never hurts to have a flat shooting round and the semi-automatic platform is a dream when quick follow up shots are needed.

As you may have expected coming from the Performance Center, this rifle carries an MSRP of $2035 and while I have not seen one yet at retail, I would guess it will sell for a couple hundred dollars under the $2000 mark.