Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles If you have a 300 Mag and wanted something larger...

What would you go with for North America? Likely hood of dangerous bear is slim as well. 338WM seems obvious. The 338RCM and 325WSM also seem really solid. Liking the 338FED the more I look at it. Thoughts?

.375 Ruger.

.325 WSM is nice, but I'd go .358 Norma, .338 Win, 9.3/.338, 8mm Rem Mag, .340 Wby, .338 Ultra or something of that magnitude

Big time!! Isn't anything in this world I couldn't do with a 223, 270 and 375 Rugger..

Dober

375 H&H or Ruger.

Is the likelyhood of dangerous bear "slim" as stated or "none"?

THat would make a difference to me.

The .375 Ruger is on my wish list but if not going into big bear country a .338 RCM would do nicely. Nice compact rifle, excellent ballistics.

I now have a fondness for 45-70's and 45-90's. They almost echo when one yells down the barrel. If something gets lodged in there, one can find a stick and poke it out. There's something about slinging out 545 grain slugs that's appealing too.

338 rum and never look back.
you just want something larger in diameter, or for l/r, or ?
what isn't the 300 doing for you ?

Since my chances at a big bear are a tad better than slim, I'll stick with the 375H&H. thats probably why I am having one built right now. Not that my 45/70 or 416rem are lacking but what the heck.....

That being said I would hunt anything up here with a 300winny

I would buy the best bullets and use the 300 until it failed. Note, I said it and not the shooter. Most of these forums are about building and buying more rifles, rather than actually using the stuff you have. More talking and pondering than using.

Hey Rin, whats wrong with building guns? Was a law passed that I missed that said folks can not own more than 1 gun?

338 RUM

9.3 or .375

375 H&H or 9,3x62

375 H&H would be a great choice, almost a 100 years old and still going strong.

Dino

This question is sorta like posting the question "What size and kind of shoes should I buy?" with no other information as to size of the poster, budget constraints, intended use or the current phase of the freekin' moon. Everyone then dutifully answers with their own choice that suits their own region, recoil tolerance, favorite shooting/hunting needs, bank account. There is a reason they sell a fair amount of Marlin 45/70 Guide guns, 375 H&H Magnums, 338/378 Weatherby Magnums, and 450 double rifles each year, in spite of them all falling into the category "larger than the 300 Magnum". They each fill a certain need, depending on whether you need a short range deer/elk rifle, a long range elk rifle, an all around African rifle or a buffalo stopper. Or maybe the guy just wants something to shoot rocks with.
My point being is that if somebody is going to take the time to ask a question, he should take the time to include a few details so that he could get some responses that go to the point, instead of everybody just posting what they own.

Rant over.

Fred

Just curious- if big bear is not on your list, what in North America can you not easily take with your .300 Mag.?

In a proper weight rifle the 375 H&H doesn't recoil bad at all. If you handload you can run the gamut from 225 gr Hornadys all the way up to 350 gr Woodleighs. If you are looking at a light weight rig the 338 Federal stuffed with premium bullets ought to slay all kinds of critters without kicking your teeth loose.

My vote would be the .338 WM in a control round feed action.

This is what I carry when hunting elk or deer in griz country.

Using a 225 gr Partition it has the same trajectory of a .30-06 shooting a 180 bullet. A step up would be the .340 Weatherby but the recoil of this cartridge is unbearable.

Remember out past 100 yards the .338 overcomes the .375 H&H in both velocity and energy.

Now that I know how to load the Barnes TSX bullets I will switch to their 215 gr TSX in the .338 WM.

n2daddy:
We ended up rebarreling my .338WM to a .308 Norma after shooting 3 local mule deer and 3 black bears with it.

While it was a fine cartridge, with the admittedly small sample of animals we used it on, we didn�t see a vast improvement over my wife�s .308Norma. For that matter it wasn�t as much improvement over her .308 or my �06 as I�d hoped it would be.

A good friend used to guide for bears on the northern BC coast and while he spoke highly of the .338WM, he ended up using a .375 H&H Sako as his choice. As an aside, I thought that his Sako was easier to shoot well than my .338 which was in a Ruger 77.

Anyway, based on what I�ve seen and heard up here, my next large bore will be at least a .35� or 9.3mm, perhaps if I�m lucky even a .375�.

Good luck whichever way you decide.

Regards,
Dwayne