308 vs Winchester 300 short magnum

[Bill Daniel]

I am a rifle newbie and would like to put together an all round hunting rifle. I would base this on a Winchester 70 Featherweight action and barrel(20 in.) with a McMillan stock to futher reduce weight and improve weather resistance. I had settled in my mind on 308 as a caliber but just read an article on the short magnum in American Rifleman and now am unsettled. Any thoughts on the short magnum in such a light rifle? Game options Kentucky Whitetail to Elk out west.
Thanks,
Bill Daniel

 

[Badger Arms]

The short magnums were tried before. There are the 6.5 and 350 Remington Magnums. There is a problem with the short magnums in that there is really no need. If you pack the power of a 300 Winchester Magnum into a .5" shorter cartridge, why not just buy the more available longer cartridge? The few rifles designed for these cartridges are only .5" shorter in the action and half an inch shorter bolt throw with maybe 4-6 ounces saved in weight. Problem is, you get more recoil from that same savings and and in the heavier loading, you might just want that extra weight. I own a Remington 660 in 350 RM and it's a nice rifle but a cannon to shoot. I'd rather have 6 more inches of gun and a pound more weight myself.

 

[jbgood]

With modern bullet design and construction, and with modern powders, you can get a great deal of performance out of the .308 in a lot of shooting situations. Point is, you just don't need the "magnum" label on a cartridge to have an excellent all around rifle. You get the outcome you want without paying the price of shooting discomfort.

 

[Kaboom]

Also if you are limiting yourself to a twenty inch barrel there is no way to burn the powder in a magnum. Muzzle blast doesn't acomplish much. With your rifle description the 308 will be fine. Also it's common.

 

[Art Eatman]

Here I go again: Most published figures for velocity are taken with a 26" barrel. When you shorten a barrel, the loss is roughly 70 ft/sec per inch of cut. It can run as high as 100 ft/sec/in; it occasionally is as little as 50 ft/sec/in.

As near as I can tell from the articles (typically, every ten years or so, in magazines like the American Rifleman), larger cartridges are affected more than smaller cartridges. I would venture that a magnum would be affected more than something like a .308.

One more little oddment: When the .308 was first developed, it was reported that it was the result of an effort to combine bullet, powder, and case dimension to operate efficiently in a 19" or 20" barrel. Minimum losses, in other words, from the use of the shorter military barrels.

This means there are fair odds that the Maggie would have much more thump on the back end, but not all that much more thump out front than the .308.

A fair number of folks have posted here about their elk-hunt successes with a .308. The .308 is plenty good for deer. It would have notably less recoil than the Maggie, and practice ammo is much cheaper...

Points to ponder,

Art