Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting All hail the wonderful and mighty .338 Winchester Magnum

I'm thinkin' I'll like it, probably like it more after the pad but hopefully I'll get some range time with it tomorrow. Starting with some 225 gr factory loads.

Once upon a time I did a 416 Taylor off a M70 with the Winlight handle with the schnable on it. It was a bit cheeky but not anything this knot head couldn't live with. Mainly used it for yotes/chucks and porcupines b4 it found a new home.

Dober

You should write a book so titled

I reckon that 338 will be all I want in that light of rifle, only thing I had close was a 375 H&H in a remington sps stock (those sps dangerous game rilfes) I think that was around 7 3/4 #'s before the scope. Bet that 416 would make ya break a sweat !

Mark,

Hey, porkies can take a lickin' and keep on tickin'.

That's why they call them "the poor man's" wildebeest.

John,

The two best loads we found after fairly extensive testing was a .340 with a 250 Horn sp and the .416 Rigby with one of the old 300 Barnes Orignals and or something like that.

Dober

That's gonna WAY overpenetrate.

Dober-
Oooohhhh baby! If it had a name, I'm guessing it was along the lines of "The Attention Getter".

Not read the posts, but no doubt the 338 is a great round and proven killer as a bore size.

Recoil is subjective - as to tolerance. Every person is built differently, as are rifle stocks/weight.

That said, the 700 SS/BDL I had was more than I wanted to shoot, never could squeeze them off as well as my 338-06. No doubt, a rifle shooting a good 338 bullet at decent speeds put thru vitals will drop most any game.

No doubt, since inception, smaller bore rounds have indeed been blessed w/better bullets that do act like larger peers. I lean towards the lighter recoil spectrum so I can shoot more, and not get beat up.

For purely a hunting rifle, the 338 has an enviable record on game, w/o a doubt.

65BR, I think you've got one great setup in a 338-06. I could be very happy with that! My '06 might become that, next rebarrel.

My .338 is relatively mild to shoot due to, I think, the flexy M700 XCR plastic stock and the squishy Limbsaver pad. Sumptin'. At any rate it's a rifle that I shoot very well- which is what matters in the end.

Now, a .270/.338 wildcat would be cool..........

There was a time I believed very firmly that elk required larger bores and heavy bullets;rather than dink around with a little old 338 caliber(which I also owned and hunted with) I put together a 35 on a full length,blown out 375H&H case(this was before Layne Simpson came up with the 358STA) and loaded 250 BBC's to a full 3050,and 225's to about 3150.Action was a pre 64 300H&H and barrel was a 12 twist Krieger.In a Brown stock it weighed about 8.5 scoped and is the only rifle I ever saw make a 4X Leupold quit...

This shot as flat to 500 yards as the 300 Weatherby 180,and if you like romp and stomp this will provide it on both ends,being kinda like a 375 AI.I took it on an elk hunt to Arizona but as luck would have it no bull cooperated,and after having whacked a few bulls with a 300 mag and watching them crumble like poleaxed steers to 270's,30/06's and 7 mags;along with a good number of 338's and 340's as well, I just abandoned the idea,deciding that the elk were not armor plated and who needed to be clavicle-crunched that bad...???? The silly thing gave me a headache,MagnaPort and all

..thereafter all medium bores except the 375H&H have gone the way of the dodo...if I were serious about shooting elk in the next zipcode,ie making a regular habit of going past 600 yards, I'd build a 12 pound 338 Edge,Lapua, or RUM,and hire a lackey to carry it at 9000 feet,but I don't do that stuff so the elk are gonna have to be inconvenienced by being killed with a Big7 that weighs under 8 pounds.

I am not, in the slightest,concerned about the outcome.....

One of the benefits of getting older and knowing more is that one now comes in out of the cold and quits building heavy kicking rifles...

You don't have to wait for the 84L. You could just get T3 Superlight. It's half the cost and twice as accurate as a Kimber (at least mine anyway). See its even less than 7 lbs in '06 with a fairly generous scope. And yes that's 5 shots, 168 TTSX @ 2900.


Here is my T3 Lite in .338 WM, same scope 3.5x10x40 Vari-x III, a couple ounces more than the '06. I think my 84M Montana will be collecting some dust.


Just some ideas....

Mine weighs 6.5lbs with a Leupold 2.5x in Millets mounts. It shoots very well and recoil isn't that bad.

I have a Remington XCR II in 338 Win. mag with a Leupold VX III 3.5-10x40mm that is a shooter probably use it this year more than my 300 RUM

You'd think with a name like ts300wsm you'd be using the short 300 more.....

+1

my two heavy (although not heavy kicking) .338s are going or gone, and the Kimber Montana .325 replaced them.

Fun to see this thread surface again...

I haven't killed anything with my .338 (an XCR bobbed to 22.5"), but I will concur that .325 is a whole lot of whupass, and in a Montana you've got tremendous thwack per pound of rifle there.

I'm rehabbing an injury and am a bit recoil-intolerant right now. My .338 has been parked at the back of the safe... however I did take it out and shoot at 450 yds with it for just a few rounds the other day. From prone, boom >> WHOP! three times. Love that rifle. And really, .338 recoil is no big thing (at least from my XCR).

I have a Sako Finnbear Pre Garcia in 338 Win Mag. I looked long and hard for that rifle. I recently added the exact twin in a 270. If one day the recoil is too much, I pull out the exact same rifle in 270.

I have been playing with yet another one.
.338 caliber rifles seem to keep coming back to consume the .338 bullets that seem to breed on my reloading shelves.

My latest findings using Rel 17 which is breaking 2800fps with 250 grain Nosler Paritions.

Something just keep getting better I guess, like us!