I have been a 300 WBY slut for years, having killed all but 3 of my elk with this cartridge. My initial intentions were to get a "500 yard elk rifle". Well,I have shot 10 or so since this decision and all have been under 100yds- go figure! I basically wore out the barrel in my Sako Finnbear and rebarreled it to 340 Wby. I figured it would be more of a good think. It's not, it's too big for practically anything BUT 500 yd elk! I may rebarrel it back to 300 again. With a 24" bofors barrel, I could easily get 3000 fps with various 200 grain bullets using H870- a filthy powder I might add! In this day and age, there are far better powders than this old dog! I had my best luck and still do with H4831 with the 165s. I never used any other weights in this rifle. I would get 3400 with the 165s. My Norma brass lasted an average of 11-12 reloads.
I built another one with a 28" barrel but broke the stock shortly after I started working loads up and have yet to fix it! I got 3700 out of factory 150 Hornady loads so I had to quit using factory ammo (no freebore in the chamber)I'm sure it's way over pressure. With exotic bullets- 140 and 150 grain OX bullets, I could get 3600 with reasonable pressure but decided it wasn't necessary with todays modern laser rangefinders and went back to the easier to shoot 165-168s. Yep, the 300 WBY with its magic radius shoulder is something to behold!
Great article
