My first experience with a New Ultra Light Arms rifle a little over 30 years ago was a Model 28 in .300 Winchester Magnum--the first .300 WM I ever shot or used to take big game. With a 2-7x Bausch & Lomb Compact in Melvin's rings, it weighed a little under under 7 pounds, and shot three different bullets--the 165 Hornady Interlock, 180 Speer Grand Slam and 200-grain Nosler Partitions--into a composite 9-shot group of around an inch at 100 yards.
I didn't find it the recoil all that bad, even from the bench, but his stocks fit me well and I was 38 years old. Killed some game with it that fall using the 200 Partition load, and offered to buy it, but it was one of the rifles Melvin sent to various gun writers for testing--and he said no.
Thirty years later recoil doesn't feel quite the same--but more importantly I found a .300 Winchester Magnum wasn't nearly as "necessary" for certain kinds of big game as many hunters think, and I've taken a bunch of big game in both North America and Africa with the several .300 WMs I've owned since.
