Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Your favorite.300 magnum

And, is the ballistic twin to the 300 H&H. That puts it in pretty good company.

Since the only 300's I own are of the H&H variety, that gets my vote...

I like the 300 RUM and the 300 Win Mag the best, but it's hard not to like a 300 magnum of any flavor.

I have several 300's. 30-338, 300 WSM 300 Win, 300 Wby., 300 Rum, and 30-378 Wby. I use the 300 Wby most of the time. My oldest son carries the 30-338 and my youngest son is partial to the 300 Rum.

Its been that way since the beginning of time.

Now that's some funny chit. But it's true...

.300 H&H. 200grn Partitions at .8 MOA all day long.

You forgot to tell us, that you shot him from a cross that canyon in the background.

Really, that's a great bull.

Congratulations.

My favorite .300 Mag is the ones you guys own. Let us keep it that way. I prefer .30 plain. Now that I think of it, the only mags I own are a .44 and a WMR. They were misnamed at birth I think.

Don't hate me for being such a dinosaur.

I'v never been a fan of any .300 Magnum. To me, they are a cassic "tweener"...niether fish nor fowl. If I feel the need for more rifle than a .30-06, I generally bypass the .300's and go straight to .338.

With that said, the 300's make fine all-around rifles for North American game....just no better than a .30-06 in my opinion. If I were to choose any .300 it would likely be an H&H in a classic style safari rifle, but the H&H actually offers almost nothing balistically over the '06. For any significant gain ballistically you need at least a .300 Weatherby

To me, the 30-06 is the "tweener" - stuck in between the 308 Win and the 300 magnums.

I still like the '06 and have a couple, but I'm more likely to grab a 308 or a 300 WSM.

Back a few years ago (about 30 ) I had a 300 Win Mag, a 300 Weatherby, and a 300 H&H, all at the same time and all M70 Winchesters. The 300 Win and Weatherby were custom and the H&H was a stock pre 64 M70. I was in my 300 magnum phase learning my way around these cartridges, and I took the Weatherby and Winchester hunting quite a bit. I loaded a bunch of bullets but mostly 180's in all three.


The fastest of the three was the Weatherby which averaged about 3150 from a 24" barrel; the 300 H&H did 3090,and the Winchester was sort of stuck somewhere in the middle of those two. The results sort of surprised me because I had read from various sources that the H&H was no better than the 30/06 ballistically, and the 300 Weatherby was the barn burner high velocity king of the 300 magnum crowd.

But I had never seen a 30/06 do any better than 2750-2800 fps with sane loads. The H&H was close to 300 fps better,and fell behind the Weatherby by a whole 60-70 fps (!) Later on I would learn that, if you outfitted the Weatherby with a 26" barrel and the right powder you would get over 3200 fps with a 180 gr bullet.But I chronographed Weatherby factory ammo with the 180 and it did 3190....not bad,and about 100 fps faster than the H&H with good handloads.......again this ain't what I had read.

I also learned that, if I loaded the 300 Win Mag in a H&H length action and OAL to 3.5+", it would rival the Weatherby for velocity...and in a 24" barrel, so seemed more efficient,I settled for 3150 or so with a 180 gr bullet and used that load for a lot of hunting.Powder charges were 8-10 gr less than the Weatherby,depending on the powder.

Had a bunch of other rifles (factory and custom)chambered for all three cartridges and results were always much the same.

I concluded a few things....first, my old mentor, JOC, was right about a lot of stuff but dead wrong about the H&H vs the 30/06...the old Holland round stomps it with good handloads,even if the factory stuff is nothing to write home about....but that can be said of the 30/06,too with some factory ammo.

Second, while it's good with anything the "best shot" for the 300 Weatherby was with a 26" barrel, and a 200 gr bullet at close to 3100 fps. This is where the bigger case showed some superiority over the smaller one's.

I owned a 300 RUM when it came out,and have sat and watched load development in rifles belonging to friends;shot their rifles quite a bit. It's easily the fastest but I could not fall in love with burning 90+ gr of powder and torching it all off in an 8 pound mountain weight rifle.I'll leave that to others.

I hunted with the H&H, Winchester, and Weatherby, killed a bunch of elk and other animals with the Winchester and Weatherby from hard off the muzzle to 400-500 yards.I found all three to have more punch on heavier animals like elk on the far side of a canyon than a 30/06, which is no toy,but isn't a 30 cal magnum either.

I sort of learned that the velocity differences between the first three cartridges were not really the quantum leaps I had been led to expect, but more like baby steps between all three. What I could do with one I could do with the others,at the range and on game.

So these days when someone asks about "which 300 magnum?" I shrug because once you start a 180 gr bullet at around 3100+- fps it doesn't matter;and at least with these three cartridges there's only 100-150 fps that separates them.

I never used the real heavy match bullets in the 300's but maybe the differences will matter more with those bullets.

Ive always loved the way the browning 78 rifles looked, I wanted one chambered in 300 wby, but could never find one, so, I had a browning 78 re-chambered from 30/06 to 300wby added a 7mm rem extractor, and added a 3x9x leopold scope , and found i had a really nice elk combo that threw 190 hornadys into tight groups

velocities were not spectacular, at about 3000fps but 1/2" 3 shot groups at 100 yards off the bench were common

340mag, I'm DROOLING over that Browning 78! Beautiful rifle!

I really like my Remington model 700 XCR in 300 RUM shooting 180 Accubonds

It was fun reading my way through this thread. I have worked my way through 5 different versions of .300 magnums over the years. I came back to the .300 Win Mag earlier this year, and it is the only one that I plan to keep in the safe from now on. It is accurate with bullets from 165/168 grains up through 200 grains, and I shoot it well. Although my primary elk rifle is a Ruger No. 1-S in 9.3x74R, the .300 WM will go to elk camp with me every year. No doubt we will take an elk or two together before we both retire.

I ain't never had a .300 mag, but if I did, I'd be a .300 H&H.

308 Norma for me. Have had 2, still have one.