Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Again, Why The .325 WSM?

Page 2 of that link shows Swift with a 220 gr bullet and Woodleigh with a 220 and 250 gr bullets.

Mike

I think Winchesters marketing folks need to be drug tested. I can see absolutely no reason the 325 would ever have any hope of succeeding. It is bigger than your standard deer rifle, which ends at 30 caliber, but too small for the next class of rifle, call it elk/Alaska rifle that starts at 33 caliber. Sure some will extol it's virtues, but the general hunting public has no such interest in such a round.

I see at as about as useful as a 13 foot tape measure. Won't do anything a 10' tape won't do, and isn't enough for the bigger jobs.

I am not sure I get what all the hostility to the cartridge is about. The 338-06 and 35 Whelen are used from everything from deer to pigs to elk. Probably the 325 WSM will appeal to that group of hunters. Unlike the 338-06 and 35 Whelen, the 325 WSM can be chambered in a shorter action. Seems as though the cartridge would be a useful addition.

It's what we call in the old country, a "Me Too" cartridge.

Nothing offered that wasn't covered before. It will go by the wayside I am sure.

The short action is a rehash benefit to provide boring comment to a non issue.

Seriously, the writers of 25 years ago tried to shovel this down our throats as a benefit when any percieved advantage in weight saving from a shorter action is lost in the real world by the standard variation in stock wood weight.

Unless you go the complete custom rifle route, you are kidding yourself.

There is no benefit whatsoever in a short action bolt action simply because if you have a range of rifles, like most hunters, you simply provide variation in bolt throw length which does not help you in a tight or fast situation. You need consistent and routine handling qualities and putting a short action rifle in the rack is short changing the ballistic potential you have with a standard action.

I can see a benefit in a reasonably short cartridge like the 7mm or 300WSM in a classy lightly profiled rifle, such as the Kimber where the walking is long or high but that is a special need not an excuse to legitimize the already failed short action concept.

One of the great things about being old is that you really do understand that there is very little that is genuinely new under the sun.

Apart from the above example, short actions offer nothing new and nothing superior to a plain Jayne '06 length action.

The only person the 325 will appeal to is the 8mm fan. I can assure that the 338-06 and 35 whelen fan is laughing at the 325 WSM, as I are one of those. There is no apeal to the 325 to me, and I'd venture to say my opinion is the norm in that regard. I'd take the 300 WSM every time over the 325 for any use I'd have for a 30 caliber, and would choose something bigger every time when I find a 30 cal lacking.

Before I got my .376 Steyr I thought it was a cartridge I would never use. After I got my .376 Steyr and hunted with it, I started unloading my medium bore rifles. .338-06 gone, .358 Win gone, .35 Whelen gone, .338 Win Mag waiting for relative to come by and pick it up. I also sold one .375 H&H.

I would not buy a .325 WSM either...jim

One could have made the same arguments when Winchester came out with the original 338 mag. In fact, given its odd for the time bullet diameter, I'd say it was an even LESS likely candidate for success than the 325.

But at the time IIRC there was a huge gap in the magnum lineup between the .300s and the .375 in terms of factory cartridges. There was no 8mm Rem mag, .340 Roy, .350 Rem mag, or even the .358 Norma that came out and was introduced in the .US. a year later than the .338. The 350 Griffin and Howe had died out by the 30s. So there was a vacancy and a need for the .338 in a niche at the time unfilled. Compare that to today's line-up wherein Win introduced the .325. I think AussieGunwriter said it best in that there's nothing it can do that something already here cannot do as well or better.

By the way welcome to AussieGunwriter.

While there was certaily a perceived gap beteen the 30 and 375 magnums at the time of the 338's introduction, was there any REAL need for Winchester to reintroduce a bullet diameter last used in the 33 WCF? Had the 458 been necked down to 375, wouldn't it have provided H&H ballistics in an '06 length action? Hunters of the day could have had a rifle on the commercial action of their choice featuring the same performance as one of the most well-proven general purpose African hunting cartridges in history. That wasn't good enough for the paint fume-huffing congenital idiots in the marketing department though. They forced poor, suffering engineers to foist off some oddball caliber number on an unsuspecting public. You'd have thought these nimrods would have learned their lesson after the 270 fiasco back in'25. THAT one didn't last long, now did it? Yet it seems there's no stopping the evil that is Winchester's marketing department. Rather than letting ballstic engineers give us the 338 WSM all of us would give our firstborn sons to see factory standardized, the marketing monkeys make us settle for a lousy 8mm. That's a whole .015 inch SMALLER. We want BIGGER bullets in our WSM's!!!

OK, that's the end of my rant. For the record I think all the 325 WSM nay-sayers are perfectly right. I may buy one on general principle (big 8mm fan here), but beyond that I'm not sure my local Gander Mountain will sell another.

Well, there's no doubt hunters, shooters and amateur ballisticians are nit-pickers and a fickle bunch. We measure watershed differences by the 2nd and 3rd place behind the decimal and by the fraction of a millimeter. Sometiimes these differences are maginified beyond reasonableness but on the other hand the laws of physics which are ballistics are not to be denied.

This whole thread is not about whether the .325 is a good cartridge; it may be but rather why Win chose this 8mm cal when their last WSM was 7.65 cal and the whole world above 7.65 was available to them.

One of the gunwriters or someone with inside knowledge at Winchester can correct me, but IIRC from the gun press, Winchester did look at the .338 and the .358 calibers. They decided on the 8mm size as it gave the best blend of ballistic performance in that case size - velocity for bullet weight, retained energy at various ranges, stuff like that.

Same reason those Special Ops guys chose the .227 caliber in a .30 Remington case for the 6.8 SPC - they tried everything from .243 to .308 and found that the .277 diameter bullets at 110-115 grains gave the best overall performance.

So, as far as I know, the .325 Winchester WAS designed by the ballisticians. The only input the marketing guys had was when one of them spewed his coffee all over the board room table when he saw the poison word "8mm" on the design specs, then threatened to hold his breath until he turned blue unless the ballistic nerds agreed to call it a .325. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Jim--

Assuming it was well thought out from a ballistic advantange standpoint, you have to agree that that is really "straining at a gnat" to conclude that a .325 is going to have superior numbers than a .338 or a .358, something that will be imperceptable in the field if it is even actually true. Couple these "advantages" that you can't see with taking a chance on a cal. that has never been perceived domestically as necessary and on it goes. Just playing the devil's advocate here; perhaps we've beaten this dead horse to a pulp.

George

The .338 was NOT a success when it first came out. It hobbled along for a number of years, until suddenly elk hunters fouind out that all the bulls they'd killed for years with .30-06's were springing back to life. Suddenly, anything less than a .338 was totally inadequate.

Seriously (though I was semi-serious there), the .338 DID fill a niche when it was introduced. There was nothing between the .300 H&H and Weatherby and the .375 H&H and Weatherby.

If anybody can remember back that far, the .338 was originally offered with 200, 250 and 300-grain factory loads. It also fit in a "standard" .30-06 length action, which at the time (1958) was a big deal since the boys were still building a lot of rifles on Springfield and Mauser actions. The .338 (and it's kin, such as the .264 and .458) were designed specifically as "short magnums" that could fit in a 3.35" magazine. This was a marketing necessity in those days (as, it seems, is fitting in an under-3" magazine these days).

As for the bore-size choice, somebody named Elmer Keith (ever hear of him?) may have had something to do with that. Keith had experimented for years with different medium-bores, and eventually came to the conclusion that .33 offered the best combination of bullet weight and downrange trajectory. After a while hunters found out the .338 Winchester did offer something more than the .30's--but only when loaded with heavier bullets. The 250-grain became THE popular bullet weight in the .338.

Now, skip forward to 2005. The .338 is pretty popular, probably the leader among medium bores in the U.S. But 90% of the people who use it load 200 or maybe 210 grain bullets--and sometimes even lighter. Why? Because Americans have become brainwashed in favor of "high" velocity (anything less than around 3000 fps won't kill anything, and makes the round a "woods cartridge").

We have also fallen for the simplistic god of kinetic energy time after time, who leans heavily toward velocity, not bullet diameter or weight. But empirical evidence, in the form of dead game animals, has proven that heavier, fatter bullets work better on bigger animals. This has been proven so many times that it's ridiculous to argue otherwise. That is exactly why the .338 Winchester Magnum rose above its early non-popularity and became a world-wide cartridge.

The .338 made it's reputation with premium 250-grain bullets. To argue that the .325 is its equal because the .325 bullet is only .015 smaller, or that the .325 has 173 foot-pounds more energy at 400 yards, is naive. The 220-grain Power Point is the heaviest available factory load for the .325 , and while the Power Point is an OK bullet, it ain't a Nosler Partition--or a Fail Safe, or a Barnes X. And it only wqeighs 220 grains.

Now, in the .338 these days a 225-grain Barnes X or 230-grain Fail Safe will do the same things as a 250-grain Nosler Partition. Do we have something similar in the .325? No. The heaviest premium bullet the factory offers is a 200-grain Nosler AccuBond--a better bullet than the Power Point, but by no means as deep-penetrationg as a Fail Safe or Barnes X--or, say, a 220-grain Partition.

The bullet selection and factory loads for the .325 make it a competitor of the .300 magnums, not the .338's. If somebody wants to make the case that, due to an extra .015 in bullet diameter, the .325 is a LOT better than the .300 WSM, .300 Winchester Magnum, .300 Weatherby Magnum, etc. etc., feel free.

But don't try to tell me it is a good as the .338. I have used the .338 all over the world, on game up to 1500 pounds plus in weight. I know the .338, and the .325 is no .338.

MD

Thank you Mule Deer, That was a great explanation. Now all of you still wondering why or why not the 325, go in peace. So ends the lesson for today. Just so there is no confusion, I'm with MD on this one. Steve

My point exactly though not as definitively put. The 325 as is with current loads can only compete with the .300s which is why I raised the original question.

George

really, with a 350 rem mag, you could do without the 325. I had one, a model 70 with a 24" barrel, recoil was a non-issue with the featherweight stock and longer barrel. sold it only 'cause I mainly shoot deer and did not need it. would make a nice alaska gun though. sold it to an elk hunter.

Nice explanation as always. I've always thought that the marketing guys were probably sitting around one rainy afternoon sipping coffee and they came up with the following rationale.

"Well heck, if we make the new cartridge in .338, it'll just hurt the sales of the .338 that we already have. Let's make it up in .323 and invent some ballistic advantage over both the .30 and the .338. Then maybe we'll get a few .338 loonies to rush out and buy one while attracting some new customers as well"

In the end, marketing is about creating new categories (or at least the perception) in order to attract new buyers. When a company duplicates something it already has, they may in fact sell the new one at the expense of losing sales in the existing one. No net gain there.

JimF

Call me crazy, but I have always felt that if I were to use any "magnum" I'd step up from my 280/30-06 class cartridges and go straight to the 338 Win Mag. Why? Well for starters I don't shoot far as some folks and any kind of "extra" velocity wouldn't benefit me. I can hit it as far as I care with my 280 or '06. Second, if I'm going to take a beating, I might as well make it worthwhile. I figure stepping up to 250gr. pills out of a 338 Winnie would be quite signifficant, in both respects. I may hunt elk once or twice in my lifetime so such a rifle(338) isn't warranted in my opinion for me. The 325 WSM looks nice, but the 338 Win. Mag has been around much longer and has a proven track record, plenty of good bullet options, tons of load data, and about as much gun as I'd EVER wanna tackle if I had a choice.

Having a 338 in a 7 lb 14 0z rifle and shooting 250s
AND hating 8mms.

Ideally, (I know Nosler and Rem have to get on board.)

I think there is a real niche for the 325 in a 6 lb 8 oz rifle with a 22" barrel shooting 220 Partitions at close to 2,900 fps.
(Maybe a 700 Ti or a Kimber Montana would fit this slot.)

The 220 gr. would be apex abiltiy for elk in my mind.

Shooting flatter than 338 225/250s and hitting just as hard as a
225.

Killability for timber hunting raking shots to long distance
for those who use click adjustments, the 325 has the poop to do it.

700 Ti (short, light, handy and swings nice)
220 NP
Leupold vx3 in 2.5x8 with top click adjustments.

Like I said, I would retire my 338.