)
Hi again FairChase,
There are many but, the .280 Remington is one good example to illustrate what I meant by the "latest and greatest" comment.
It was introduced around 1957 as the "7mm Remington Express" but later changed names to .280 because several dim bulbs fired one each in 7mm Remington Magnum caliber rifles resulting is split brass, damaged rifles and a few injured dim bulbs.
The 7x64 Brenneke was introduced about 45 years earlier and is the ballistic twin of the .280 Remington.
These two cartridges even look so much alike as to be difficult to tell apart when they are standing side by side.
The .260 Remington is another "latest and greatest" one that inspires nothing more than a lazy yawn from me.
We already had it's ballistic twin the 6.5x55 Mauser, for about 73 years prior to the Remington version so what's Remington's point? (sales hype/sales gimmick, that's what).
The 7mm-08 seems like a silly cartridge to me when compared to the already excellent and well established around the world 7x57 Mauser, (introduced about 88 years earlier than the ballistic twin 7mm-08), especially if I want to place five 175 grain loads into my rifles magazine.
You can forget about that with many rifles chambered in 7mm-08 because they are almost always built on short actions/short magazine box format.
What do any of the "latest and greatest" .375 caliber cartridges do in practical hunting situations that the original H&H version has not been doing since about 1912?
Nothing that I can see, except some of them kick harder and all of them make finding factory loaded ammunition difficult to impossible, especially in remote places like bush Alaska, bush Canada and much of Africa.
Can't speak for Northern Australia, where buffalo hunting is done but my best guess is that the H&H is available, not so much the "latest and greatest" .375 caliber cartridges though.
And I agree with you on the WSSM cartridges.
But for belted cartridges, at least 4 of them feed and eject very well with a belt and actually need it to maintain head space (.300 H&H, .375 H&H, .458 Winchester and .458 Lott).
There is a pile of cartridges that only have a belt for "sales hype" purposes (7mm Remington Magnum, .300 Winchester, plus many others, including the whole Weatherby line of calibers) - total sales gimmick but it sold product like "Doctor Soandso's Snake Oil, guaranteed to cure everything" did back in the Travelling Medicine Show days.
In other words those belted cartridges surely did make their proprietors rich.
Regarding the .30-06 vs .308, I agree that they perform similarly on deer, hog, black bear, caribou and similar size game around the world.
I've shot deer with the .308 and .30-06 both, plus hogs, caribou and African "Plains Game" with the .30-06.
The obvious similarity in performance on such critters is doubtless because this class of animal is not likely to tell the difference between having been struck with a 150 to 165 grain bullet at about 2750 fps vs 2850 fps.
I suppose 100 fps probably means about nothing when you're already closer to 3,000 fps than you are to 2,000 fps.
Conversely I can understand why military administrations prefer the .308 (aka: 7.62x51 NATO) over the .30-06.
It uses less powder, and brass to achieve nearly the same ballistics with its 147 grain bullet vs .30-06 and 150 gr bullet.
When you're loading up literally billions of rounds for war, these thousands of tons of materials saved become very important.
This is not to mention the steel they save in making shorter receivers on all those machineguns.
However, strictly as hunting cartridges, personally I will always prefer the .30-06 due to its ease of handling 220 grain bullets.
In that regard, the .308 is about useless because most hunting rifles chambered for it have too short of magazine box to fit a longer bullet than about 180 grains.
Likewise, even if the magazine was long enough, the cartridge does not hold enough commonly available powder to get a 220 gr bullet moving fast enough to make me happy.
The .30-06 conversely both fits factory loaded 220 gr cartridges into the average hunting rifle magazine as if designed for them (imagine that) and they typically leave the muzzle of same at around 2350 to 2400 fps - muey efectivo.
This load I have a fair sprinkling of experience with, including in Africa (sport hunting and culling both) and I am very fond of it.
It is still popular here in Alaska for moose and although I have not shot a black bear with it, I am told it is one of the best in .30-06 for cleanly taking them with one shot and yet without ruining a lot of meat.
Long boring story short, I guess I'm saying that I see no advantage to the .308 as a hunting cartridge and do see some definite disadvantage as described above, when compared to the .30-06.
I apologize for the length of this rant and I will now stand by for a sound thrashing from those who at least disagree, not to mention true believers in: "newer is always better".
Cheers,
Velo If It Already Works Don't Fix It Dog.
... 
