Legends of Benchrest: Remington’s Mike Walker
Sierra Bullets recently profiled Mike Walker, Remington engineer and first president of the National Benchrest Shooters Association (NBRSA). In the vintage photo above, Mike is shown with his Remington-actioned benchrest rifle at the 1994 Super Shoot. Mike had reason to smile — at that 1994 event, Walker set a 100-yard small group record with a phenomenal .046″ five-shot group. Mike was truly one of the “founding fathers” of modern benchrest shooting. As Sierra notes: “The field of rifle accuracy and the sport of benchrest shooting would be very different today, were it not for this man.”
Along with Remington Engineer Jim Stekl, Mike Walker helped develop a wildcat that became the 6mmBR cartridge. The original 6mm Benchrest Remington wildcat was a necked-down .308 x 1.5″ Barnes cartridge. That Barnes cartridge was derived from the .308 Winchester case, as shortened to 1.5 inches. The parent .308 Win case has a large primer pocket (though Remington did make a special run of small primer pocket .308 brass). Remington later made factory small primer pocket 6mm BR Rem brass. Compared to the original 6mm BR Remington case, the modern 6mmBR Norma cartridge has very slightly different dimensions, with a small primer pocket and a small 1.5mm (0.059″) flash-hole.
The Sierra Reloading Manual states: “Behind the scenes, Remington’s Mike Walker and Jim Stekl had been working with a series of short, squat little cartridges based on the .308 head size. Based on their results from testing and actual benchrest competition, the BR family (as they came to be called) showed tremendous promise. Since then, both the 22BR and 6mmBR chamberings have been offered in Remington’s vaunted 40-X target rifles. Remington finally standardized the 6mm BR Rem in 1989, offering both loaded ammunition and factory-formed brass. It should be noted that the case standardized in 1989 was changed slightly from the original dimensions of the wildcat 6mm BR. The new case has a neck .040″ longer than the original, making the maximum case length 1.560″.”
About 54 years ago, I had several written correspondences with Mike regarding Remington building me a .22-250 as this great varmint chambering was not commercially available.
My heavy varmint gun at that time was a .22-250, Mauser 98 action, 15x Unertal Ultra Varmint Scope, laminated walnut and maple Fagen stock that I bedded and finished myself, and a 28″ Douglas barrel. I formed the brass from 250 Savage and I neck turned it as well. It hammered. My walk around gun was a Sako Vixen in .222, which also hammered after it was glass bedded. Hundreds of crows met their match over the years from this combo.
Mike seemed very receptive of Remington looking at a .22-250 but I was told the lawyers shut down the idea. How ironic that I am also a lawyer. There has to be a joke in there somewhere.
Mike was always very informative and I saved the letters for decades, reading them often, but they got lost in a move.
I must fess up. Mike did not know that I was only 14 years of age when we were corresponding!
Mike is the one that really kept the fire going in my search for precision accuracy. I can only say “thank you” my old friend — who I suspect has no recall at all of the young boy was corresponding with.
We all owe Mike and Remington for their contributions to the game we so love.
Jim Hardy
I do not think that is a Remington action rifle he is sitting with…it appears to be a Hart or some other..but certainly NOT a Remington…
Thank you I hope to get a bigger gun
It was me, working with Jim Stekl, that did all the work at the Lonoke, AR ammunition plant to put the 6mm BR and 7mm BR into production. As a research engineer I designed the tooling and shepherded them through the production line. Also, the load development was done. Several trips were made to the Illion, NY firearms plant to meet with Jim and discuss the project.