You guys are missing a couple of points I tried to make earlier:
1) are you going to reload? If the answer is ‘no’, the difference is greater than you are representing,
2) are you going to shoot factory ammo with a bbl shorter than 24”? Again, a growing differential.
3) are you going to hunt remote DG areas? If so, ammo availability is going to favor the Lott. Don’t forget, it can shoot WM ammo, the reverse is not true.
I’m not saying the WM can’t get the job done, but the points above weighed heavily in my decision.
All valid points, no argument at all with that. If one is not a Hand Loader, or a shooter, relies on Factory ammo, then these are valid points in which to make a choice.
With that said, I have never in my life went to the field with Factory Ammo. I do Hand Load, on occasion I reload things such as 45 ACP, but with Rifle ammo I Hand Load. I don't think I even own any Factory ammo, it just does not come up to spec for my purposes.
I have hunted extremely remote areas many many times, with over 30+ hunts in various countries in Africa, multiple hunts in Alaska, Australia, hunted Mongolia, New Zealand, and even the Arctic and most of those if not all of them, there would have been zero chance of finding ammo for whatever rifle I had at the time. Most of these hunts were taken with rifles/cartridges in which involved either wildcat cartridges, or my own creations, and there is absolutely no ammo available the vast majority of the time. Over a 20 year period and multiple trips to the field, there were only two times that I ended up without rifle or ammo. One of those times was in Zimbabwe, but within 2 days I had my rifle and ammo. The other was a trip to the Arctic for muskox and I had rifle, but no ammo. I spent three days of the 5 day hunt trying to get United Airlines to find my bag, finally giving up I went to camp, used my buddies rifle, a left hand 338 Winchester, and he had ammo that I had loaded for him, so that was some consolation, used his rifle/ammo to take the two muskox I had on schedule, both within a 100 yards of each other, end of hunt.......
So what you state can indeed happen. However, from my perspective, which is quite different of course from yours, I would almost rather not even hunt if I had to use someone else rifles and ammo, it is just not what I am there for. Since my one incident was muskox and the Arctic, my wife and I decided we were not coming back to do this again, if I wanted these muskox then shoot the damn things, and go home, done, over, out. That's what we did.
One does indeed take a chance when working with something that is not a standard cartridge or rifle that absolutely will not be available to you in other areas of the world. But for me, it was never even the slightest consideration, since my objectives were to not just hunt, but to work with equipment, bullets, ammo, that I developed.
I did always take steps however, or at least try to, EXCEPT for this ONE OCCASION with the damned muskox. Since I almost always travel with my wife, I always broke the ammo between our bags, some in her bag, some in mine......... EXCEPT for this one hunt with the Muskox. I only took 20 rounds of ammo, and did not split it between us... I mean 10 rounds in each bag? What are the chances? Heh Heh........ Well, that never happened again regardless of ammo count. You see, she got her bag, I got the rifle, but no bag, so I was almost out of clothing as well, except what I had on the carry on.
I will always take the risk, but I did try and minimize it, except for one time.........
Life is to short for "pop guns" lol
with a Browning Safari 458 w/ 450s out of a 20"..I just like the much bigger 600s,700s and my 4 Bore Double!
Life is to short for "pop guns" lol
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