Weatherby and Sako fans are loyal. You gotta give 'em that.
Rolling the clock back to the forties and fifties , if someone [ Weatherby ] introduced a cartridge/rifle combo which claimed to outdo ALL the production stuff of its' time , and looked just like all the other stuff , everyone would have called B.S.
The double radiuis shoulder and different bolt lockup could be put down to an advertising gimmick except for one thing and everyone knows what it is :
THEY WORK !!
Yeah, they work. But so does the Savage, Remington, Winchester, and Ruger. Just as well!
Don't get me wrong, my all time favorite rifle still has to be my 26 inch MIJ MK V Varmintmaster in 22-250. It was a sweet little rifle and shot sweet little groups. But I would never have owned it had a local dealer not clearanced them out at half price.
Roy Weatherby was all about hoopla, gimmicks, and advertising.
Heck, he could have sold the MK V for the same price as a Model 70 and forgone the Vanguard, had he not been buying all those celebrity safaris and endorsements.
Roy is often quoted as admitting the double radius shoulder was just a gimmick. It was introduced to make chamber reamers and reloading dies more difficult and expensive to produce. Thus helping to prevent private gunsmiths chambering custom built rifles in Weatherby cartridges. The shoulder design of the Weatherby magnum cartridges does nothing to enhance velocity or reduce chamber pressure.
Don't want Mom and Pop shops competing with the factory, don't you know.
Savage, Winchester, Ruger, and Remington have all built rifles which are chambered for Weatherby cartridges, they are all quite up to the task. Perhaps with the exception of the 378 and 460 Weatherby.
What Weatherby did was design large cartridge cases in smaller calibers before any major factory did it. Then he stuffed them to the nuts with powder and attempted to keep pressures under control with extra long free bore.
I'll be the first to admit the 300 Wea was a very impressive critter, when all you had to compare it with was the 30-30, or the original slow loads in the 30-06 and 300 H & H. That is not so true any more with Imperial mags, Dakota, Lazzaroni and numerous other proprietary cartridges.
Heck there is not a nickle's worth of real world performance difference between the 300 Winchester and the 300 Weatherby.
Except that Roy did it first!
But it was not anything which any wildcatter could not have done with a bit of cash to spend. And there sure was not any magic involved.
