Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game .300 Weatherby vs. .338 win mag for hunting ?

I would take a slide rule in the out house with multipal tishu. just me thou, A Quanry for shore grin!

Buy the boy 243 or a 7mm-08 and call it good, most get to hunt Brown Bear once in a life time if at all. 99% of his big game hunting now going to be what ever kind of deer you have around were you live. Why abuse a young shooter with something like a 300 Weatherby or a 338 Winchester.

One gun for Alaska? I'd go 300, though probably just the more common Win Mag. That chambering has a good following and an excellent reputation up this way. (My 340, 358s, etc feed my "loony" problems.)

It is pretty hard to beat the 300 Win Magnum.My 300 of choice easy

I been knowin' that youse is smart!

yup

+1

Skip them both and get a 30.06

I've owned and hunted with both over the last 20 some years and have come back to my first big game centerfire cartridge. The .30-06. It kills them just as dead without all the fuss. I've spent and wasted lots of money figuring this out.

Don't get me wrong. I appreciate anything that goes bang. They are all fun.

You would never be wrong if you bought one of each!!

an 06 is ok..but if that is all I could use the rest of my life, I think I would quit..

I started shooting my .338 WM at 14 with 250 grain bullets at close to max load. I have shot it ever since. So with 14 years behind one I have learned a few lessons. First, don't shoot a lot, just shoot often. So go to the range with 10-20 rounds at a time, but go once or twice a week. Second, 225 grain bullets match the 250 grain bullets for down range ballistic performance 90% of the time and give less felt recoil. Third, I think that a 85-90% load feels about the same as a 65-75% load so don't give up too much performance. Lastly, you only need one shot when hunting, so who cares about recoil. If you use proper technique when shooting at the range and concentrate on being accurate it is manageable.

All of that being said. I would not recommend getting a teenager a 338 WM. There is nothing in the continental USA that would make a 270 inadequate, and if having a higher recoil gun makes your son afraid of the gun or not want to shoot it, then you have defeated the purpose. I would say, borrow a 338 and let your son shoot it, then ask him what he thinks.

Nick

Old Roy saw a whole buncha you "special" folks coming,IMHO.

Once I got my .338 tweaked and wrung out, I found that a box of cartridges (I handload) lasts for 4 or 5 years, mostly. An ideal year goes like this: take gun out of storage, check screws, run a patch down the bbl. Fire once for POA check. Fire a second time to drop moose, a third time for an insurance shot from a few yards out. Clean rifle, put away until next year. In a less than ideal year, I fire it only once.... or a half dozen times. Unless I've changed loads which need tweaking. I use it only for moose hunting, tho my '06 and several other calibers have killed as many, and as well. Mostly I carry it for moose hunting for bubious comfort, as there are some other big hairy, 1,000 lb critters out there...

Actually, I haven't fired the thing in several years, since I moved up here where there are more caribou than moose.

The .260 and '06 don't get much more of a workout either on targets, or even on caribou, per animal... I know where and how they shoot, too. It doesn't take mucho bench-rest rounds out the bbl. once those two items are determined to kill game at all reasonable ranges.. IF the longer range is known, or it's inside 300 yards.

The final comment here is an excellent suggestion, IMO and one I would follow if I had a son to teach to shoot and hunt.