Living in a straight wall cartridge state, I have been starting to use the 350 Legend on whitetails, was wondering how it would work on African animals. Blue wildebeests can be pretty tough, sounds like the 350 did a great job on it.
I’ve taken over 30 American whitetail deer with the 350 legend, and witnessed over 100 taken with it. As such I’ve got a LOT of strong opinions about the cartridge.
The cartridge itself? Beautiful, perfect in every way (given the constraints it was designed with)
The bullets some manufacturers make for it? Some of the worst in the entire industry, across multiple manufacturers. Some of the worst penetration I’ve ever seen (8” total out of a 22” barrel bolt gun, with 20% of bullet weight retained, only bone hit was a rib) was with Winchester deer season XP. Second worst is the Remington core lokt, third worst is Winchester power point.
From my best guess, they tried make sure the slow speed of those bullets would get 2+ times expansion like normal 243/6.5creed/30/30 ammo can usually get. This is a mistake. The bullets out of the 350 are considerably wider than those already, but not much heavier. Fortunately, even a non expanded 350 legend bullet (a straight cylinder with no tip) would have enough width and energy transfer to kill pretty much anything outside of Africa. Even in Africa, dangerous game, giraffe, and a few others would probably be the only things a 350 would be sub marginal for.
Barnes copper ammo is by far the best you can buy for the 350 legend. 1.5x expansion at most and awesome penetration and weight retention. For handloaded, the best results I’ve had have been with the cutting edge bullets .350 legend long range whatever it’s called with the delrin tip. Awesome accuracy with almost no effort, great BC all things considered, easy to get 2300fps from (in my 22” barrel bolt)
I’ve had 80-90% good results with the hornady FTX, but there’s been a few times where it has also kindof exploded. I think if they want to have such a thin jacket for this big of a bullet, it should be bonded or it’s just going to grenade like a varmint bullet.
Also, avoid the subsonic ammo at all costs, the 350’s do not come with a fast enough twist rate to shoot anything with a full powder load subsonic, so what you’re really getting is just a downloaded 9mm for energy which just… isn’t enough for anything but a perfect shot at a perfect angle.
Here’s just a handful of the game I’ve taken with the 350 legend (Winchester xpr) from ranges sub 10 yards to roughly 300:
