300 H&H Magnum, my favorite super thirty
We all have a favorite hunting caliber, the reasons behind your choice favorite can be many. Mine is the .300 H&H Magnum.
This rifle has been in my family for a long time, the story goes that my grandfather bought this rifle in the pharmacy in Brits for 70 pounds. He bought the Sako with 40 rounds of Kynoch ammunition, when the gun was passed to me in 2001 it still had 38 Kynoch rounds left. It is one of very few Sako rifles that was built on a k98 magnum length Action. I think what i like most about the H&H is not the fact that it is very versatile and that it has one of the best-looking cartridges of all time. I like it because it’s kind of rare and not everyone has one.
This caliber was designed by Holland&Holland in 1925 as the super 30, it is based on the .375 H&H case necked down to .308 caliber. It was designed for shooting 180gr -220gr bullets at longer range and for everything right up to mouse and eland. For me it has proved to be a very good all-round rifle for both plains and bushveld situations. For at least 5 years as a young PH my .300 H&H was my only rifle, this meant that the rifle worked extremely hard, it was used for culling, problem animal control, back up rifle for wounded plains game and was also used by clients when they did not bring their own.
Over the years I have experimented with several different load combinations of bullet makes and weights. The best results I had for accuracy and effectiveness was with Hornady 190 gr interlocks. My rifle just liked this bullet. Sadly as far as I could find out Hornady stopped making the 190gr interlock , I have bought all the stock in south Africa that I could find and have enough stock to last me a year or 3 but I dread the day I will run out.
There are few Hunting memories that stand out with my Sako, the first is a trip down to the eastern Cape with my Dad to go hunt in the Bathurst area. We were looking for wildebeest , and our guide spotted a group of bulls on a hillside, we sneaked up to the bulls but we could not get any closer because of the open terrain on the hill sides, I was not accustomed to the area and was used to judging distance in the flat bush veld of Thabazimbi so I referred to our guide. He guesstimated the range at around 300 meters. There was no usable rest to shoot from so I went prone and rested the rifle on a slight bump on the hillside, I used my scope’s reticule to adjust for the hold over for the range given. When I felt comfortable and steady, I squeezed the trigger and I lost sight of the bull with the recoil. When I regained the sight picture i could see the wildebeest lying dead in his tracks, he fell right where he was. There was loud cheering from my Dad and our guide. It took us a while to make our way to the opposite hill where the bull was, when we got there, we found that the shot broke both shoulders right on the knoppe (tip of the shoulder)
Another great memory was a zebra I got to the hunt in the Mkuze Game reserve in Natal, back then I was working for Morongwa bush safaris, they owned a ranch in the Thabazimbi area. The owner bought some hunting packages on the Mkuze game reserve at an auction at the Phasa meeting.
I got to tag along on the trips because I had a professional hunters license for natal. There were 2 zebras available on the packages, and one of the clients did not want to hunt his, so the opportunity was given to me. We found a group of zebra moving across and opening in the natal bushveld, they were about to disappear in some thick stuff so i had to make a quick shot of the shooting sticks, I did not want to do a lengthy recovery in the thick bush so opted for spine shot to drop the stallion in the opening in the bush. At about 150 m we could hear the impact of the 190 gr Hornady Interlock clearly, and the zebra was down, the trackers were very happy for the easy recovery we could drive the land cruiser right up to the zebra.
The .300 H&H mag is not a very popular caliber these days with all the caliber choices that are available and is mostly only available in second hand guns or custom build guns. But there are still a few good ones around and the hunters who have them that I have met swear by them and love this classic caliber. I guided a hunter from the UK a couple of years back that had one in a beautiful Winchester pre-64 action. If you are looking to build that special rifle in a classic caliber to hunt anything from a dassie to a big blue eland bull this would be great caliber to consider, reloading components area still readily available and there are some good bullet choices available in the .308 cal. range.
May the original super 30 continue to make hunting memories for us as they are passed from one generation to the next, my son is 7 now, not so long from now will he will be hunting with his Great Grandfathers rifle.
Long live the 300 H&H magnums.
