300 Weatherby Mag.

[morg]

Who has hands on experience firing the 300weatherbymag?

How can I tame it down? Looking to change from dropping heavy game to reaching longer range.

What scope do you use.

[morg]

Ya'll mean to tell me that nobody on the list has a 300 Weatherby Magnum!?!?!

So far I have come to think the Accubrake system may be the best to tame the recoil.

But I sure would like some input.

[johnharris]

I have had one. I did not shoot it much and can't really help with those questions.

[C. Richard Archie]

I know it is not a weapon to be treated lightly. Had a friend long ago that got one, his first shot, he did not have a good grasp on it. The scope slammed back and it took 13 stitches to close the wound over his eye. Put a couple of good dings in the stock as he came backward off the bench and dropped it.

I fired it several times after that first day, recoil is manageable, but the deer I hunt do not require that much gun.

[morg]

[TacticaLogic]

Morg,

Everything is a trade off in a situation such as what you are describing... To go from taking big game at short/medium distances to striking targets at long distances, it all comes down to ballistic performance. Big game bullets are heavy, providing the mass that, combined with velocity, take down the big game. Long distance rifles perform best with heavier bullets as well, but they might be shaped differently. Heavy big game bullets tend to have a more rounded or even flat point (this is called the meplat) at the "tip" of the bullet, and perhaps a flat bullet base - I always tell folks to think of them as a flying sledgehammer. A long distance bullet might weigh exactly the same as the big game bullet, but would possess a pointed tip and have a "boat tail" base - the shape creates less drag so it will go further. The weights could be exactly the same, but the ballistic coefficient on the long distance bullet would be much better, allowing it to perform accurately over a longer distance. To the person behind the trigger, the recoil is going to feel the same when they pull the trigger regardless of the shape (assuming the powder charge and bullet weight is the same.) The reason I am talking about bullet weights is because they are key in the problem we are trying to solve. Outside of installing something along the lines of a muzzle brake of some sort (think along the lines of the B.O.S.S. system that came out on Browning bolt guns several years ago, still only marginally effective) the only way to ballistically reduce felt recoil on the back side of the rifle is to either a) reduce bullet weight, b) reduce powder charge (careful!), or c) both. Solutions a, b, or c will reduce the felt recoil, but will drop your ballistic performance... That goes against what you are trying to achieve regarding long distance and accuracy, in that the lighter bullet will be more heavily effected by wind as it travels down range, and downrange performance of the bullet will suffer due to a lesser powder charge and/or less bullet mass. It is just Newton's Laws at work... If you are going to get the bullet far enough downrange and still have it possess enough accuracy and power to do the job, you are going to have to launch it on the shooter's end of the ballistic path with enough mass to fight crosswinds and enough velocity (when combined with the aforementioned mass) to do the job.

Now... Where I trying to get my wife behind the trigger of a .300 Weatherby Mag. (once she quite looking at me like I was crazy for asking her to fire "a bullet that BIG!?!?") I would look at ways outside of modifying the exterior and interior ballistics of the .300 Weatherby Magnum. In other words, figure out a way to let the rifle and cartridge perform as it was designed, while isolating her from the recoil... A slip-on or nice leather lace-on recoil pad, a women's safari-type shirt with built in recoil pad (yes, they even make them for women that want to shoot elephants with those big .500 H&H double rifles), or even both. It also helps (and I'm sure you know this, but I have to say it anyway since someone reading this may not) if the shooter understands the importance of having the rifle pulled firmly into the shoulder, as it is the difference in being "struck by the buttstock" or being "shoved back by the rifle's recoil.) Almost all recoil is able to be handled when it is just a "shove", but I have seen people terribly bruised by even the old stand-by .30-30 Winchester because no one instructed them to "pull the rifle tight against the shoulder."

As I said, everything is a trade off. At a certain point, you reach what is called the "law of deminishing returns", in that you might make the recoil managable by downloading the cartridge, but it might be cheaper to do some trading and just get a .308 Winchester if the ballistic performance is comparable.

If you were looking to make this into a shorter range, light/medium game rifle, a downloaded cartridge (lighter bullet/less powder) would be feasible (though maybe not economically viable). Shorter distances and smaller game let you get away with quite a lot when you are working with downloaded large rifle cartridges.

Hope this helps, and hope all this makes since...

Regards,
Mike

[tn308fan]

Try this load 300 Weatherby Magnum - 180 grain Speer SP bullet, 35.0 grains of IMR 4198 powder, CCI 250 primer, Rem. case. COL 3.560". MV 1988 fps in 26" barrel. (Based on the Speer Reloading Manual No. 13.)