Take a walk on the WILDCAT side

As long as shooters have been squeezing triggers there has been a desire to achieve a higher level of performance from their firearms. After World War Two and especially during the 1960s there was a great deal of work devoted to modifying cartridges largely in an effort to increase velocities.

During that time many wildcat cartridges were developed, a few of which ultimately wound up being ‘legitimised’ by the ammo and firearms companies who adopted those designs for production. However, many other models didn’t achieve that same level of accreditation, but are in their own rights no less impressive.

P.O. Ackley’s improved designs

During that heyday of wildcatting the name P.O. Ackley became almost synonymous with the concept of improved cartridge designs. To create these new items it became necessary to fire the production cartridges inside the chamber of a rifle which had been dimensionally modified. Mostly those dimensional changes included straighter case walls and a sharper shoulder angle,