Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Finn Aagaard on the 280 Remington

Figured I better help all these poor fellas sell their 280 Rems.

July 1989 . . . American Hunter

Great writer.

Another spike in .280 Rem. sales is on the horizon.

Not into nostalgia. Just performance.

My gun safe with a current population of 3 .280's would probably agree!

Ol' Finn was a heck of a writer. The 280 Remington is a heck of a cartridge, too.

I knew of Aagaard's use of the 7x64, so I figured he would be a fan of Remington's version.

I have used one a few times on Whitetails and found it to be very well suited.

Something I notice about Finn Aagaard is that he used a 270,280,7x57, 30/06 on game (and others) and thought them all "good". I think the 30/06 was his favorite.Whatever.

This was likely because he understood good game bullets, could shoot straight and knew how to hunt. Those things alone negate a lot of discussions wasted comparing cartridges.

He was never worried about a cartridge being uber cool....whatever the hell that means.

Bob, I would say those four cartridges are probably the most used cartridges on earth. The good thing is he didn't use them because they were the most popular...he used them because he knew they would work. powdr

powdr true.

Yeah, and coincidentally all four chamberings are just fine with a 22" tube.These are my favorites too and all ideal for the great pursuit of wild sheep,goats and mule deer...and I have tipped over a few bull elk with some of these too.

For the last 10 or so years of his life Finn became a 308 Win man, and remained so til his death in 2000.

Yep--and why not? It basically duplicates "traditional" .30-06 ballistics.

As an aside, despite the .280 Remington's virtues, I can't believe the .280 Remington it's one of "the most used cartridges on earth." This may be true among among a very small set of hunters, especially those with enough money to travel AND buy custom rifles--in other words, rifle loonies who want to be a little different. If my memory is correct, I've seen exactly four .280's in all the hunting camps I've spent time in around the world, and one of them was mine. Two of the others belonged to a couple of friends from the same town in Oregon, and the third belonged to a Canadian hunter, a museum-quality taxidermist who liked custom rifles.

I do have a good friend here in town who was a .280 nut for a while. In fact he outfitted not just himself but his wife and two teenage daughters with .280's, in order to simplify the ammo situation. But then they went on a hunt in eastern Montana and, due to various unforeseen circumstances, ran low on ammo--and there wasn't any .280 ammo in any of the local stores. So he sold all the .280's and bought everybody .270's. I can't think of anybody else I personally know in the state who uses a .280 right now.

Even 7x57's aren't all that common anymore. Can remember only four of them as well, and again one was mine. The others belonged to a guide in the Czech Republic, an American on a safari in South Africa who had been unduly influenced by an American gun writer, who brought a 7x57 and 9.3x62. And Ingwe brought one on our safari to Namibia in 1999.

In fact, have seen far more .308 Winchesters that 7x57's, even in Europe. That includes a red stag hunt in Norway--where the .308 was by far the most common chambering among the two dozen hunters I met. (There wasn't a single 6.5x55 among them!)

Probably the most common cartridge used by traveling hunters, whether in North America, Africa or elsewhere, has been the .300 Winchester Magnum.

Brad: What I remember most about Finn was that Mauser 30/06 of his that he seemed so fond of. So I sort of missed his transition to the 308....

I think that may have occurred after he moved stateside?


John in 35 years the only 280 I ever saw in any camp I hunted in belonged to "me"....until about 6 years ago when a buddy took one to Wyoming. But he's one of those loonies whose made it a his life's mission to shoot one animal with every caliber he can think of.....

As popular as the 30/06 is with hunters, I notice that you are right when it comes to guys who travel a lot to hunt.You see relatively few lugging a 30/06.....a great many gravitate to the 300 magnums, no matter the game. And the 300 Win Mag does lead the pack from what I have seen.

My favorite BG round is easily the 308, and to a lesser degree, 270 Win. Right now I have two of each, and those are the only BG rifles I own.

The 308 is simply a thing of beauty. Kicks noticeably less than the 30-06, but does the same thing. It's available everywhere, miserly on powder, and inherently accurate. Likely the easiest round to get shooting of any cartridge I've ever worked with. The 308 is the epitome of KISS.

I used a 280 for a time in the early 1990's. I simply saw no reason for it over the more common 270, and eventually switched back.

Bob, Finn moved to the US in the 1970's. He started switching to the 308 in the late 80's, early 90's. He wrote a number of articles about it, and used it on everything up to Nilgai.

I forget a lot....

I used a 280 a lot until I learned it didnt work any better than a 270. I had mine rebarreled to 270 after I tried to buy but could not find one box of factory ammo. I was driving across southern Idaho into south central Wyoming to shoot an antelope. I stopped at every town from Boise to Soda Springs and all the places across Wyoming without finding a single box. Yes I went into every town and every store.
It is a G33/40, Burgess metal, Monty Kennedy stocked outfit so it was a big deal to put a new barrel on it. I still have it.
The 308 is great but I like the extra velocity of the 270. You can find 270 ammo everywhere big game is hunted.

He was indeed. I kept in touch with Berit after Finn died. She is quite a lady and her current husband, Bill, is a really nice guy.

I find myself highly concerned with optimal cartridges Feb-August. This is how I end up with a 280AI instead of a 280 or a 6.5x47 instead of a 7/08. Once hunting season comes around I could care less about 50 fps or .05 differences in BC. Off season boredom is also how I end up with 5000+ dollar scoped hunting rifles. My first deer rifle was an off the shelf 270 Win. My hunting successes or failures over the last 15 years would be no different if I had kept that rifle as my only rifle. This said, the 280 is way better than the 270

I think the 7mm-08 is to the 280 what the 308 is to the 30-06


While it's true the 308 sized cartridges only give 95% of what the 06 sized case give they get you 100% to where you need to be short of a 375 H&H. And they do it with a number of inherent advantages.




Shod