Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats .308 Norma Mag

Anybody got experience with this? I'm getting ready to rebarrel a mauser with a magnum bolt face and am trying to decide which direction to go. The rational thing to do would be to go with a 7RM or 300 Winny, but they are kinda boring.
It's currently chambered in 270 Wby, but the barrel is too short and has a muzzle brake. I made the mistake of accidentally touching one off while not wearing hearing protection. OUCH! I may go back to 270 Wby since I have brass and dies, but for some reason the Norma intrigues me. More than an '06, less than a 300 Win Mag, and kinda cool, while still having components available. Obviously I can't run into Walmart and buy a box of ammo, but so what?
Anyway, opinions?

Picked up a Voere Cougar couple years ago as a project. Messed with it a bit , wouldn't say it's less than a 300 WM from my experience. And I too like the cool factor.

I'd do it. The 308 Norma magnum is what the 300 win magnum should have been.

And in the past I bought my brass from Huntingtons.

Norma beat them to the 30-338 punch (with minor dimensional differences) all right.

Hookset;
Good evening to you sir, I trust the weekend has treated you well and this finds you rested and ready as you'd hoped to be for the upcoming week.

Our experience with the .308 Norma goes back about a quarter century now I guess - my how the time does fly.

At the time I'd picked up a wartime Steyr built 98 action, a .30 caliber barrel and a Bishop stock with the goal of building a flat shooting magnum rifle for my good wife.

We chose the .308 Norma over the .30-338 simply because the gunsmith had access to a reamer and it required less alteration of a 98 action than a .300 Win Mag.

Here's how it turned out - rust blue, bedding and stock work by me, Wolffe mainspring, commercial Mauser cocking piece and Mark X trigger.


After a few years of testing it on local mulie and whitetail bucks I was impressed enough with the round to have the same smith take the .338 Win Mag barrel off of my Liberty Model 77 Ruger and chamber a Parker Hale barrel blank with the same reamer.

Again the .308 Norma chambering allowed for a smooth feeding rifle - certainly slicker than some of the early .300 Win Mags I've played with in the older 77 actions.

That Ruger .308 Norma been a bit of a "lucky rifle" for me over the years, making for a good number of successful hunts on game including moose, whitetail and mulie bucks.






Interestingly we ended up with a Ruger No. 1 B in .300 Win Mag that I used for years as a saddle gun and with it took a good number of mulie bucks over the years.

Anyway with our Normas we've been able to duplicate the velocity we achieved with the No 1 - despite it having 2" more barrel and a generous throat.

For most game up here I've gone to shooting 168gr TSX in my Norma and my good wife used 165gr BT Hornady Interlocks with success for years.

As well I used 200gr Partitions on a few bucks and was very happy with the results on game.

For powder, we've run the gamut from H4895 - which was surprisingly good with velocity as well as accuracy to the usual medium slow ones like H4350, RL 19, N160, IMR and H4831 and even some H870.

I don't typically use Norma brass either by the way, I reform .338 Win Mag brass which results in a slightly shorter neck, but otherwise runs fine. In the lineup then from the left - #5 is a .30-338, #6 is a .308 Norma formed from .338 Win Mag and #7 is a factory .308 Norma.


Oh, #8 from the left is a .300 Win Mag.

Good luck with your rifle build whichever way you decide and all the best to you this summer.

Dwayne

Dwayne, great post. I have 308 Norma dies and 50 new Norma brass sitting here just waiting till my 264 barrel is finally completely done I ran a 308 Norma for quite a while in the 1990's into the early 2000's and it worked great obviously. I relied on IMR 4350 with 180 gr Speer Mag Tip's and Partition Gold's, and MRP with Speer 200 gr G.S. and 220 gr Partition. No complaints at all.

These days I will probably look at some of the newer 165-180 gr bullets with H 4350 and IMR 4451 and see what happens. I'm also going to try my old favourite the 220 gr Partition with a slower powder and duplicate the old load I used to run just because.

The 308 Norma is too good to die and is great for someone who wants something a little bit different than the average guy. Norma brass is top notch stuff but had good success reforming W-W 338 brass in the past.

I was just at the funshop and ran across an older Savage 110 left hand with a custom walnut stock that was chambered in 308 Norma magnum. That baby almost went home with me...

Should have grabbed it probably could have gotten it for a good price since most don't even know what a 308 Norma is. Mine is going to be built on my LH Rem 700.

$300.00 with an older weaver k4... I've heard the older 110's were the ones to get too..

Think about a 7X61 Sharpe & Hart. It has a higher cool factor.

Dwayne, in re reading your post you mentioned H 4895 which is another powder I'm looking at with 165's and maybe even 180's. Hodgdon's data looks quite good and it only burns around 60 gr +/- depending on the exact load. Was thinking of using some 165 gr Speer's with it when the gun gets done. Should have mild recoil, I ran a RL 15 load like that in a 300 WSM that I owned and it was very nice to shoot, accurate too.

I would have walked out with it lol. Great price........

I should have, but didn't know what the older savage 110's were bringing now days... This one had nice bluing on it too. Actually not a bad looking rifle at all. At first glance I thought it was a left handed weatherby, until I saw the bolt and then I said, "oh it's a savage"...

I have a set of 30-338 dies. Always planned on building one but I found a 300 Weatherby I like a lot. Great cartridge.

Never know, might put a nice one together for my son some day. Everybody should have at least one good 300 magnum of some sort.

Thanks for all the responses.

Dwayne,
As is always the case, your post is very informative and refreshingly polite. In this internet age, civil discourse is quickly becoming a thing of the past, but some of us still appreciate it.

I just jumped on a set of dies and some brass here on the classifieds, so I suppose I'm committed now.

Hookset;
Top of the morning to you sir and thanks much for the kind words, I do appreciate them.

I see I neglected to mention that we'd played a wee bit with two other Normas over the years, one a 24" barrel that we chronoed and one 26" that I don't think we did.

Both shot very well and were comparatively easy to make that happen.

I know its a relatively small sampling too, but the three 7mm Mag rifles I played with years back refused to produce "book velocities" with 154gr/160gr bullets and the Normas did it without fuss.

I will say that when shooting the 200gr Partition in my Ruger which has a Claro stock and quite light barrel contour there's no doubt that the rifle has gone off when you pull the trigger.......

Certainly not a whole lot less recoil with the 200gr Partion than there was with the former .338 shooting 210gr Partitions anyway.

That said, the first whitetail photo in my post has a 168gr TSX lodged under the hide on his left rump cheek - after it has taken out two vertebrae from a front on shot.

To say I'm pleased with that performance is correct for sure and while there aren't piles of grizzly where I hunt they're not unheard of either, so with that rifle and load I'm confident that if it came down to a loud social discussion I could at least get my point across if nothing else.

Good luck with your rifle build sir and if I can be of assistance don't hesitate to fire off a PM across the medicine line and we'll do our best.

Thanks again and all the best to you all this summer.

Dwayne

I bought a custom 308 Norma with the best trigger I have ever felt with highly figured wood. Probably made in the early 60's because it had a Herter's recoil pad and it fit me well. It came with 80 rounds of Norma factory ammo, and a Bushnell scope - for $600.00. Was going to have it rechambered for a 300 win, but bought a set of RCBS dies for $30.00, I am going to leave it as is. Have not hunted with it yet, but is as good as any other 30 magnum out there. Doubt I will run into any one in deer/elk camp with one( like my 8mm Rem Mag).