All this talk about the 300WM. There is another option, the venerable 300 H&H. The old workhorse will print clover leaves all day, and none of the game I’ve used it on could tell the difference between it and a 300WM. And the coolness factor is off the scale. Pair a 300 H&H with a 375 H&H, and you won’t bow your head to anyone.
Hello Begger,
I’m +1 with you in that, the original H&H .300 Magnum, paired with the original .375 H&H outfits the hunter for pretty much anything, except perhaps a truly heavy / dangerous animal, suddenly charging from thick bush, at extremely close range.
For this, I would compliment the above two excellent hunting cartridges with a .458 Lott.
Anyway, from my grumpy old man point of view, the only reason for the nearly endless list of other .300 magnums was/is sales gimmick.
Very successful sales gimmick but sales gimmick nonetheless.
And furthermore, contrary to various manufacturer’s glittering claims, putting large powerful cartridges into short throw bolt actions only benefits the manufacturer, not the rifle user.
In fact this trend definitely has one very annoying disadvantage to the rifle user.
It is cartridges quite often not fitting into the short magazine, when loaded with heavy bullets.
.325 WSM ? I have no experience with it and do not even know anyone who has this caliber.
Having said all that, I agree with Forrest Halley on the notion that live factory loaded .300 Winchester ammunition is much easier to find these days.
Probably easier to find than all other versions of .300 magnum combined.
Nonetheless, I’m still uninspired by the Winchester version.
I began messing around with rifles and hand loading at age 16 and now I am almost a fossil.
Most of my friends are rifle grumps like me.
And, over the decades I have noticed a certain few cartridges that are not especially finicky about what primers, powders and bullets you feed them, they are almost always inherently accurate.
These are the .222 Remington, .308 Winchester, .300 H&H, .375 H&H, .416 Rigby, .45-70, .458 Winchester and .458 Lott.
Conversely, I have observed more than one .300 Winchester rifle that required much hand loading experimentation (as well as much weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth lol), to finally discover an accurate load for each specific uncooperative rifle.
I guess that’s about all the news that’s fit to print around here.
So I’ll shut my trap and sit down now.
Cheers,
Velo Dog.
