When did moose hunting rifle have to be lightweight? My moose rifles all weigh empty around 7 1/2 lbs.. Anyhow I take either one but if something goes sideways ie forget 338-06 ammo at home you are screwed unless you find a forum member up here that could square up on using there press. So I would opt for the 300 WSM..
That's true about ammo that's not locally found.
My newest Ruger Hawkeye weights over 8 pounds empty. I asked MacMillan to make sure I didn't get a lightweight stock, and the response was, "the stock I am making for your .338WM is designed to be as heavy as possible to help with recoil." The same can be said about a .375H&H, as out of the box is not lightweight. But that extra weight helps with recoil.
So you build an extra cumbersome rifle to handle the recoil you would not need to worry about with a more modest and equally deadly cartridge... got it...
Perhaps you, as usual in this forum, are imagining something that isn't? The rifle I am referring to is already heavy, even with its 22" barrel. It is a Ruger Hawkeye African model that has a beautiful walnut stock. I replaced the stock with a McMillan fiberglass one, that with a decelerator recoil pad installed, fits my LOP. This rifle is not cumbersome at all, and in fact its heftiness does help with recoil. I am certain that you are old enough to have at least heard of the great number of published articles that relate to taming rifle recoil, and that rifle weight is one of the methods used...
Okay, change the word "build" to "select"... I initially chose build because you modified it and used recoil taming as a reason for your selection. There is no way a Hawkeye African is as light and handy as an ordinary commercial rifle with a 22" barrel. It simply is not. I am more than a little familiar with the concept of taming recoil. When building stocks for rifles with potentially sharp or heavy recoil I start with cast to mitigate recoil. If it needs weight I can add it, but it still comes back to selecting a rifle with potential recoil issues for questionable gains at that increased "cost" of compromises.
No, I did not "build" that rifle. I chose the McMillan synthetic stock because I don't want to mess up the beautiful walnut one during the moose seasons in the interior of Alaska, not because of its weight. However, the McMillan stock is slightly heavier than the wood stock, and solid fiberglass all the way through, and they built it for me. I didn't want a lightweight stock, since extra weight does help with recoil, and so I asked McMillan. On top of that, a gunsmith friend of mine measured my LOP, and the stock was built to my LOP with a decelerator recoil pad as part of this LOP. I did not build the rifle I mentioned above. It is a Ruger Hawkeye African that is exactly the same as the one shown in the link below, except that it has a sort of dark matte gray color, does not have a muzzle brake, has a 22" barrel, and express sights. The bolt is also finished with the same gray color, and the rifle weights 8 pounds empty.
https://ruger.com/products/HawkeyeAfrican/specSheets/47120.htmlAgain, those are your assumptions. I only have two hunting rifles, both Ruger .338WMs and that's what I because familiar with since I retired from the military in the early '90s. I select my handguns and rifles the way I want them, not based on anybody else's opinions other than my gunsmith's. But this guy would never tell others what rifle and caliber they should choose. I am quite used to the .338WM's recoil. I have other rifles, but the .338's are the ones I use for hunting.
