Those of you long enough in the tooth to have been reading magazines like this one prior to around 1990 probably remember Col. Charles Askins, a prominent member of the gunwriting fraternity and a man whom I considered a colleague and friend. To say that Charlie was contrary, crusty, controversial would be putting it mildly, but he could charm the pants off you if he wanted to.

Excellent and classic cartridges, but ones that the author would cut from production if he owned an ammo company, are the .22 Hornet, .222 Rem., .220 Swift, 6mm Rem., 6.5x55, 7x57, .284 Win. and .300 Savage.

On a regular basis the good Colonel would write articles like "Let's Junk the .30-06" (or the .30-30 or the Winchester Model 94--or any other sacred cow he could think of that would tick people off).

Early in my writing career Charlie advised me to write the occasional contrarian article to stir up the readers, just as he did. I took his advice to some degree, but where he was purposely confrontational and intransigent, I tried to be diplomatic. I have, for example, written several articles over the years about why I'd never choose the .30-06 for any kind of hunting, yet I never hesitate to recommend the caliber as being the very best choice for those who are not handloaders, who are not frequent shooters, who do not dote on guns and who want versatility from one rifle rather than a rack full of specialized ones. And I've had no crosses burned on my front lawn.

When editor Jerry Lee suggested I do a piece on calibers I would junk, I thought it would be fun--at least I did at the time. Now that I've been able to give it more thought, how do you tell someone who gets his buck every year and is perfectly content with his .35 Remington or .30-40 Krag that he's using the wrong caliber and that he should junk his rifle? Moreover, how could one presume to tell an ammo manufacturer to stop producing an obsolete or duplicitous caliber if it's still profitable?

If the author owned an ammunition company, these are the only cartridges between .20 caliber and 7mm he'd see a future in loading: (left to right) .204 Ruger, .223 Rem., .22-250, .243 Win., .257 Roberts, .25-06, .260 Rem., .270 Win. and 7mm WSM.

But just for the sake of argument, if one could go through the commercial-caliber lineup and eliminate the redundancies and the losers without concern for those who own such rifles and the ammo-makers who still find it profitable enough to keep producing the stuff, what would my list of commercial calibers look like? To put it another way, if I were heading up a brand-new company just getting into the business of manufacturing centerfire rifle ammunition, which calibers would I produce?

Let's start with the smallest bore, the .17. I suppose, if we have to have a .17-caliber centerfire cartridge, the .17 Remington fills the bill nicely, but what does it offer that can't be accomplished by the new .204 Ruger? Now that I've had a couple of seasons of field experience with the .204, I'd eschew the .17 Rem., along with the .22 Hornet, .221 Rem. Fireball, .222 Rem., .225 Win. and the .220 Swift.