Hookset;
Good evening to you sir, I trust the weekend has treated you well and this finds you rested and ready as you'd hoped to be for the upcoming week.
Our experience with the .308 Norma goes back about a quarter century now I guess - my how the time does fly.
At the time I'd picked up a wartime Steyr built 98 action, a .30 caliber barrel and a Bishop stock with the goal of building a flat shooting magnum rifle for my good wife.
We chose the .308 Norma over the .30-338 simply because the gunsmith had access to a reamer and it required less alteration of a 98 action than a .300 Win Mag.
Here's how it turned out - rust blue, bedding and stock work by me, Wolffe mainspring, commercial Mauser cocking piece and Mark X trigger.
After a few years of testing it on local mulie and whitetail bucks I was impressed enough with the round to have the same smith take the .338 Win Mag barrel off of my Liberty Model 77 Ruger and chamber a Parker Hale barrel blank with the same reamer.
Again the .308 Norma chambering allowed for a smooth feeding rifle - certainly slicker than some of the early .300 Win Mags I've played with in the older 77 actions.
That Ruger .308 Norma been a bit of a "lucky rifle" for me over the years, making for a good number of successful hunts on game including moose, whitetail and mulie bucks.
Interestingly we ended up with a Ruger No. 1 B in .300 Win Mag that I used for years as a saddle gun and with it took a good number of mulie bucks over the years.
Anyway with our Normas we've been able to duplicate the velocity we achieved with the No 1 - despite it having 2" more barrel and a generous throat.
For most game up here I've gone to shooting 168gr TSX in my Norma and my good wife used 165gr BT Hornady Interlocks with success for years.
As well I used 200gr Partitions on a few bucks and was very happy with the results on game.
For powder, we've run the gamut from H4895 - which was surprisingly good with velocity as well as accuracy to the usual medium slow ones like H4350, RL 19, N160, IMR and H4831 and even some H870.
I don't typically use Norma brass either by the way, I reform .338 Win Mag brass which results in a slightly shorter neck, but otherwise runs fine. In the lineup then from the left - #5 is a .30-338, #6 is a .308 Norma formed from .338 Win Mag and #7 is a factory .308 Norma.
Oh, #8 from the left is a .300 Win Mag.
Good luck with your rifle build whichever way you decide and all the best to you this summer.
Dwayne