Good luck with that 375Ruger in Southern Africa! Or almost anyplace else for that matter. When you do find it blow the dust off the box and be sure they are still good before you buy.
I'm a very serious Hornady fan but I think the 375Ruger was an attempt to boost sales thru gun writer hype, much like the Short mags. They filled that gap that was full of perfectly effective and functional cartridges already.
Gotta keep pushing the new stuff to make sales. I have no fault with that. I'm glad they make money from people who have it in Excess to give them. Keeps them in business and that's good for all of us. But nobody is going to convince me that the 375Ruger provides any functional advantage over the 375HH or that the shortmags have any value at all over the selection that was already available to us.
If they really wanted to provide a great option somebody should be producing the 338/06 and the 35 whelen in big numbers. Those are cartridges that really work on big game!
The 375HH is available everyplace the biggest most dangerous game on earth is hunted. It will be for the foreseeable future and most certainly the rest of my lifetime. The 375Ruger has no chance of claiming that role, not now, not ever. The installed base of the 375HH is so huge that to make this feeble attempt at trying to over throw the king.......... although valiant, is a losing cause which was known all along. It was a way to extract money from people wanting the newest fad. It made money for them by improving the business with a bump using some magazine marketing for the population that just has to have the newest advertised stuff!
Step back and look at the firearm market. Has anything really improved in the last 100 years? Ammo has made the 30/06 the equal of the 300 mag when it was released, The 375HH is a far more impressive cartridge then the original when used with Smokeless Powder and the TSX VS cup and core with stick cordite powder!
..................Well I have to disagree here about a few points.
First, your statement about "blowing dust" off a box of 375 Ruger ammo in Africa or anywhere else, is at best, a purely speculative opinion. I have yet to read anywhere of any account, where any 375 Ruger rifle taken to Africa, was not successfully used.
Why shouldn`t any new cartridge company attempt to boost sales? Is there something wrong with boosting sales through so-called gun writer hype or otherwise? If you were running a cartridge and bullet company such as Hornady, you`d certainly want the writers to review and honestly critique your new round, bullet or whatever. Would you not?
So the `06 made its debut in 1906. So why the need for the 300 Wby which was intro`d in the 40s? Why the need for the 308? 300 H&H? How about the 300 Winchester which debut in 1963? 300 RUM? 300 WSM? This kind of same old analogy, is always used by the detractors of a new round such as the 375 Ruger...."Why the need when there are other functional 375s?"....There have been new gap fillers for years in just about every caliber and not just with the 375s.
In regards to terminal performance on game, the 375 Ruger has no advantage over the H&H, while the reverse is also true. That`s NOT why Hornady intro`d the round in the first place. And you`re forgetting that the 375 H&H did have a 95 year head start on the 375 Ruger. What do expect after only 4+ years in the marketplace? That every So African shelf and every other knook and cranny worldwide, would be loaded up with 375 Ruger ammo?
The functional advantage the 375 Ruger has over the H&H is simple. In the case of the Ruger Alaskan (aside from whether you like that rifle or not), it gets the same or better performance from the shorter 20" barrel. That in turn, translates to a shorter OAL rifle length, which many (like me) happen to prefer vs a 46" + long rifle, that`s not only in most cases heavier, but can`t handle nearly as well. I can fire a 270 grainer at slightly over 2800 fps and a 225 gr Hornady SP at over 3000 fps from my Alaskan and do so with very good accuracy. As such, its not just the cartridge itself, it is the rifle too which has made the 375 Ruger as popular as it is. Big difference in the field with the Alaskan vs my formerly owned 6" longer and heavier Win M70 375 H&H that I had for many years....No comparison.
Also, Hornady did not develop the 375 Ruger to out throne or un-seat the H&H. That was not their original intent. Their intent, was to achieve the same ballistic performance from a shorter OAL rifle, and design a round which would do that; nothing more and nothing less.
As to the newest fads etc? I may be wrong, but it appears by your comments in the 2nd to last paragraph in your post, that you don`t like the fabulous progress in popularity that the 375 Ruger has achieved over the last 4+ years or so? Just an assumption on my part, but I could be wrong!
Remember too, that all the current 375 Ruger owners which include myself, weren`t forced to buy one. I wasn`t forced by Ruger nor Hornady, or felt that either company were "extracting" my money from me in order to own the latest 375 caliber fad. Oh! And the 375 ruger wouldn`t work on big game, whereas a 338/06 or 35 Whelen would? Well if you say so! Yep! Shame on Hornady and Ruger for not giving more attention to the 338/06 and 35 Whelen.
Your comments and doom predictions are A-typical of most 375 Ruger detractors, which over the past 4 years, have gone "exactly and totally in the opposite direction." The marketplace over the last 4+ years, has seen to it that the 375 Ruger won`t be going anywhere and will continue its ever growing trend with even more popularity. Heard that a few African PHs ordered some 375 Ruger Africans?.....Uh Oh!
If I had such biased and close-minded favoritism towards the 375 H&H myself, I just might be a little pissed off too.......
