Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters 33 Nosler

Or you could use the 33 in a factory Remington L/A,or Winchester "H&H" length mag and have your cake and eat it too.

One last picture and I'll bow out.

28 at 3.330" (which is a stupid move by nosler,imo)with a 195..crazy how it still works, as would a 300gr in the 33.

It is?

Its no wonder how Big Stick got the way he is around here.

Indy,

D'Arcy Echols chambers the .300 Weatherby in his Legend rifles with a custom reamer with somewhat less freebore, just enough so factory ammo will work without excessive pressures. Of course, .300 Weatherby factory ammo is loaded right up there, but not as much as it used to be!

One of the reasons for the 6.5 Creedmoor is it's short enough to "chase the lands" by seating bullets out further as the throat wears.

I think recoil is a major factor in accuracy, the reason long-range target rounds have kept shrinking over the past few decades. By chance, the guy who holds the 1000-yard record for the smallest 10-shot benchrest group at 1000 yards, Jim Richards, lives right here, and is a member of the local rod & gun club, partly because our range goes out to 1000 yards. He shoots a 6mm Dasher, a cartridge quite a bit smaller than the 6.5 Creedmoor, using 105-grain Bergers.

Yeah, .338 magnums with heavier bullets do kick somewhat more than .300's, one reason a lot of .338 magnums used for long-range shooting with heavier bullets have muzzle brakes. I've only fooled around with a couple of .338 Lapuas, but each came with a brake, right from the maker!

My own present .300 Weatherby is one of the original South Gate sporters made on FN Mauser actions, the first "standardized" Weatherby rifles. With scope it weighs slightly over 8 pounds (just about the same as the 7mm Weatherby ULW I hunted with for a while) and I wouldn't want it much lighter, especially when shooting 200-grain loads!

Let's just say the 700 is the baseline for the action. Better?

Dontcha mean Howa-Like ?

Looks like a 700 to me, especially with the non-bolt locking safety.

JB, my stating the .30 Newton was to point out that very little is new in the gun world , as the makers would have you believe. I you chambered a rifle in .30 newton with modern components and used the more suitable twists now used, you would have a .30 nosler. He also listed a .33 Newton , but I do not know if it was ever made....
I bet the designers at Nosler never had a thought of the Newton cartridges and how close they really are.

Actually, I bet they did know about the .30 Newton. Any member of SAAMI has to go through a review process for any new cartridge to be accepted, and if the Noslers didn't know about the .30 Newton before that process (which I doubt) they certainly did afterward.

But as I pointed out in my previous post, they couldn't just use the .30 Newton case (though that would certainly be an interesting publicity move) because new ammo loaded to modern pressures might not do old .30 Newton rifles any good. Many were built on 1903 Springfield actions, which varied in strength, and in fact the .30 Adolph Express was at least partially designed for the 1903 action.

Just to add that there is an article by Brian Pearce in Rifle 291 March-April 2017 issue, which was just rcvd by digital subscription.

Anyone planning on chambering to this boomer instead of the Lapua, Norma, RUM, or any of the host of other 338s in this performance range ?

Anyone planning on chambering a .338 Campfire, or similar ?

I found it interesting that Pearce did a 45 shot "break in" before shooting groups. You'd think the hand lapped barrels Nosler uses wouldn't need it.

I am running the .338 Campfire again. .

A 338 works.

RickBin : Any chance of getting another peak at the original article,
Or a Combined article with follow up comments ?

Inquiring Minds want to Know. OK - Sign me Loonie Obsessed !

Thanks

All the forgoing is good “campfire banter” and can keep the fire burning for a very long time.

But the one thing I am interested in following is how the bullets are going to behave. I have been a believer in the Nosler Partitions for all calibers I have used since I was 12 years old, and the only results I have seen that are a bit less then I’d want were shot from the fastest magnums with lighter bullets.

My best guess is that the basic ‘blueprint” for the Partition bullets was put into production in the days when the 270 Winchester was about the fastest big game round made. So impact velocities of 1500 to about 2700 were involved.

When the new magnum craze got into its full swing we saw somewhat higher velocities being used and many want to minimize the trajectory curve as much as possible, so they start using light-for-caliber bullets, which means impact velocities are now going higher than the original design of the bullets was made for.

As I said, this is all just a guess, but I have used Nosler Partitions since the late 60s and I never heard anything bad about any of them until I saw lighter 7MM and 30 cal bullets being shot in 300 Magnums and 7MM mags. Even those complaints were not very common, but I have seen a few. The answer was to go up a bit in weight. All was good in the world then.

But now I see Nosler making cartridges and they want to “out Weatherby Weatherby” so I am wondering if some of the bullet designs are going to be beefed up a bit too for these factory loads. A 30% thickening of the forward jacket comes to mind, tapering down to the usual .008 at the tips. Time will tell.

What they offer now is fine as long as shots are always somewhat long, but in the real world most shots are not all that far.

Many love to do the “point VS Counter point" banter of what’s the best at 800 to 1200 yards, but the honest truth is that most hunters with ½ a century of hunting behind them don’t shoot that far, and the real world shows us that the 150 to 300 yard shots comprise about 98% of all the shots we’ll take in our lives.

So making special bullets to withstand the higher velocity and impacts at 300 yard and less may be the best thing to do for these new “hot-rocket rounds”. It’s not hard to slip in 1-2 of the older bullets into the rifle if a hunter does get a chance to shoot at loooooong range. At those ranges you have time.

As I said, it’s interested to watch.

It may be embarrassing to Nosler if they start to sell a lot of guns and brass, and the common loads used by shooters ends up being loaded with Barnes X or Hornady GMX bullets because the old Gold Standard, the Nosler Partition, just won't stand the impacts. In a few years we'll know I guess.

I for one, am not even slightly interested in one of the new hyper fast shells. I have never needed or wanted anything faster than my 270s or my 300 H&Hs, and in my rifles I use 150 and 160 grain bullets in the 270s, and 200 and 220s in my 300. Those are my 2 “fast rifles” and everything else I shoot exits my muzzles at 2750 FPS and less. So such things are not a concern to me personally.

But as a gunsmith, hunter, former guide and former CEO of a bullet company, I am always interested in what the industry is doing. This may be worth a bag of popcorn and a coke, and easy chair and some time to watch.

The 33 Nosler is not designed to "out Weatherby Weatherby." The lightest bullet weight Nosler will offer in ammo is 225 grains at right around 3000 fps, and the lightest .338 Partition they make is the 210. Based on considerable experience with various .338's and Nosler Partitions I doubt there's going to be any problem even with 210's at 3100+ fps.

Have used various sub-.33 Partitions at muzzle velocities up to 3250 fps with no problems on animals from pronghorns to bull elk, whether at "normal" ranges or further out. Would be interested in what problems you've seen.

Agreed, I've punched 210's at 3200 fps through many elk, point blank and closer, and have yet to recover one. They only leave huge entry/exit holes and an elk piled up in the tracks they were standing in.

They're the best bullet I have ever used for killing elk.

What bullet company did you work for?
I'm looking forward to Nosler's 225 E-Tip fwiw....

Yeah, those 210 make for nice holes.
I remember the first time a friend and I walked up on an elk he killed. We saw the holes that bullet made. We said, now that's a bullet hole" lol
Those 338 Nosler Partition have always worked and left nice bullet holes. I've only used the 210, 225, & 250 so, that's about all A guy would need to know. They work, and work well.

I've killed with 250 Partitions, they work great on big bulls. Nice fist sized holes all the way through and piled up elk.

Last one killed was running through the timber, I hit him high in the upper shoulder/neck area, he folded up right there. I could see the life leave his eyes before he hit the ground.

But You've got to admit that it would be fun to whack a couple gophers & PDs with a 180 BT Very small targets, but fierce !