Favorite Eastern cartridge
It's surprising that no one has mentioned the 7.62X54R Russian rifle cartridge. This is a rimmed cartridge, hence the letter R in the cartridge designation. This type of ammunition was the standard Russian rifle and medium machine gun cartridge from Tsarist days, all the way through the Soviet era and remains in use as the standard Russian medium M.G. ammo. It's performance is quite good, so the Russians see no need to replace something that works, unlike Western countries.
It is also used by Finland as a hunting and target shooting round and the Finns have some very clever loadings of this ammunition, including the so-called "cat-sneeze" cartridge, a standard cartridge downloaded so that it can be used for small game hunting. The Finns who are famous riflemen anyway, used the Mosin-Nagant rifle in this caliber for years including during the Winter War and the Continuation War against the Soviet Union, who were also using the same rifles and ammunition.
Mosin-Nagant rifles have been available in the U.S. for many years at give-away prices, some less than $100 for rifles in good condition. There were even some Finnish Civil Guard rifles on the market up till a few years ago. A Finnish Civil Guard rifle is pretty much the ultimate Mosin-Nagant.
This cartridge performs very well for hunting medium to large game and for long range target shooting.
The Finns for some odd reason call this cartridge 7.62X53. I don't know why.
Surprised that no one has named this venerable cartridge as a favorite.