Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles The ultimate Rifle Loony Cartridge?....

318 Westley Richards.

Agree with 35 Whelen AI. Son loves to shoot whitetails with 250 gr Partitions. May be overgunned, but fun to see them roll. No looking for them!

Best response on this thread... that right there is funny!

And true

But reading the scribblings of the devotees gives a good time, and that, at the end of the day, is what a hobby should give.

A cartridge doesn't need to make sense, it just needs to make happy.

358 Hoosier?

"Ultimate rifle loony cartridge" is a pretty subjective thing. For me it was my 6.5-06AI.

It ain't a cartridge, it's a POV...

I gotta say you proably nailed it with that comment, but its still fun to speculate.

8x60S Mauser

-Bob F.

I know a bunch of "rifle loonys" and the only thing I can think of that they all have in come are 6.5mm's.

It was already mentioned but here goes.

If you have a need for this you are an indeed a rifle looney. I couldn't believe the first time I saw it in the midway catalog.

A 6mm/.30-40Krag/Ackley Improved. You gotta be pretty looney to run that.

6mm/.30-40Krag/Ackley Improved Reamer

Don't have one, but I do have a rifle in .308 Norma Mag.

400 Whelen---------left handed.

Mart

OK 240 Wby blown to a straight walled case so as to headspace on belt. Use .411,or so, diameter bullets and run it in a 20" 760 Rem pump. Wanted to create an "american double" (NOTE: this was actually attempted but I will never say who tried this)

I say 348 winchester. It was only chambered in one factory rifle that I know of (the M71) but boy was that s sweetheart!

Hey! I've got one of those in a 7 1/2 (including scope) lb Rem XCR II and a 500 Jeffery!

Anyway my choice for a loony cartridge is the 475 A&M ... Here's a little blurb about it.

"I came across this funny story in Cartridges of the World and figured I'd share

Around 1960 Fred Barnes (of Barnes Bullets fame, no relation to the Frank Barnes who wrote CotW) built himself a 475 A&M chambered rifle, based upon a sporterized Enfield action. With it's open sights, that rifle weighed no more than 8 pounds (600 Nitro rifles generally weigh 16 lbs, 577 nitro rifles tip the scales at 13 generally, and most other buffalo blasting bolt guns with monsterous african game cartridges are commonly about 10-11 lbs)

Being Fred Barnes, his initial handloading effort combined stiff charges of IMR 3031 behind his 600 grain bullet (listed ballistics have 110 grains of IMR 3031 behind a 500 grain bullet pushing it 2980 fps for 9860 ft-lbs of energy, Frank surely cooked up something at least as potent, if not moreso)

Fred, some friends, and a small crowd of well-wishers went to an informal shooting near Grand Junction Colo. for the maiden firing of the rifle. Fred sat down on the pea gravel of the parking area and closed his legs to fire from the sitting position. He took dead aim at the base of a small juniper tree, which was tenuously hanging on at the top edge of a roadway cutbank.

When Fred pulled the trigger, everyone was watching for the impact. The shot went low. The tree was summarily uprooted! All watchers cheered as the tree fell, then, as a group, they looked around to find what Barnes' reaction might be. There he was, located several feet back behind his original position, lying on his back, arms outstretched, holding the rifle above his head. Dust from the muzzle blast and his ignoble recoil-induced slide (he had absorbed well over 110 ft-lbs of energy) was still stirring when Fred asked, matter-of-factly, "Anybody want to buy a rifle?"

He found no takers."

I can't believe nobody has mentioned one of the earliest and oldest wildcats: over 100 years old, the 25 Krag, created in 1906 and popular in single-shot rifles through the 1920s and '30s. It performed in the same class as the 25-06, which was introduced in 1920. It finally fell out of favor when the .257 Robts came out in 1934. There were also short versions and two Ackley versions, the 25 Ackley Krag, and the 25 Ackley Krag Short, which was Ackley's favorite with which he reported velocities as high as 3412 fps with the 100 gr bullet and H-380. Having one of these working for you today would be pretty loony, I think.

The B29 is only out loonied by the B29AI. My 9.3X62 is so mundane I am ashamed to take it to the range.

I have just taken a break from the reloading room, and realized that it is my duty to report myself for a flagrant act of loonyism. I am loading .300 Sav. rounds for a bolt action rifle (Rem 700). When you think about it, what reason is there to chamber a modern bolt gun in .300 Sav in the first place. And I bought one and load for it. Definately loony.

Anything other than 30-06

338-378 Keith Thompson - requires expensive cases, $370.00 set of trim, forming, and loading dies. All this for a rifle that will recoil hard without a muzzle break and split your ear drums if it does!

.25-284 if you go to the trouble of setting one of those up. You are definitely a rifle loony.