Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters 280Rem vs 280ai

That's interesting RE: PPU ammo.

It is my primary brass harvest fodder:

- 6.5x55/139 gr. FMJ
- .270 Win/150 gr PSP
- .30-06/150 gr. M2 ball
- 9.3x62/285 gr. SP

All bought in bulk, and, barring the 6.5x55 and 9.3x62, shot through multiple rifles:

Both the 6.5x55 and .270 Win shoot generally under ~ 2 MOA.

And the M2 ball, out of an M1 Rifle, generally under ~ 3 MOA, depending on the rifle.

(Don't shoot the 9.3x62 well enough yet to care about group size.)

Can't remember seein' any primer issues, either.




GR

I would pick a 7x64 brenneke, because two local gunshops have about a hundred boxes of ammo gathering dust and could probably be had at a discount. Plus it would be different.

Replaced my LH 280 Rem with a LH 280 AI kept my 280 ammo slowly fire forming it. Would rather run 280 AI at published loads than push the 280 Rem loads.

The brass used was Winchester. Dad gave me this rifle in 1983 and the 53 gr IMR4350 load was actually listed as the max load in the Hornady manual of the day. Current loads are now where near that amount of powder. When loaded, the powder was about 1/8" from the case mouth and a lot of powder crunching could be heard when seating bullets.

About 15 years ago, I decided that I would change the load in the rifle to a 150 gr partition. I now follow Mule Deer's advice on good safe velocity for a 7x57 and load them to around 2800 FPS.

Current brass offerings are limited and the last batch of Winchester brass I bought for this gun was horrible. Big variances in neck thickness and bullet runout runs from .004-.008". Nosler brass is good stuff but I'm not paying the huge premium they ask for 7x57 brass. I've bought some Hornady 275 Rigby brass but have not loaded any of it. I'm first going to try it in my brother's M70 FW, which has liked the Hornady bullets but partitions resemble a shotgun pattern more than a rifle group. But he wants to shoot them partition so....

I have never tried PPU brass but it can't be any worse than the garbage Winchester has be putting out the last few years. And at their price it sure beats $2.00+ a piece for Nosler brass.

I found Hornady .275 Rigby brass to be very consistent in dimensions when I tried some maybe three years ago, when doing on article on the "new" Rigby/Mauser rifle in that chambering.

I found the Winchester brass I’ve weighed to have the largest variance in weight of any current production brass. It equaled the worst military brass in that regard.
I’ve read many articles where the author used Winchester brass. I have to wonder what is going on at Winchester?

Since this thread is more or less off the original topic, I thought I'd chime in regarding the 7x57. Most of y'all have a lot more experience with it than I do, but I have several different 7x57s that I load for, and with two exceptions I've never caught a bullet. One that I caught was a factory 158-grain Prvi Grom that entered the front of a wild pig and lodged in the rear ham, and the other was a handloaded 175-grain Speer Deep Curl that went through one pig and stuck in a smaller one that I didn't know was behind it. Fortunately it was a two-fer: both DRT from that single bullet that I was able to recover. Everything else has left both entry and exit wounds. Granted I'm not shooting beyond about 200 yards - mostly well within 100 - but I haven't found that I really need anything larger or faster for my style of hunting ("want" being a different story altogether).

Every once in a while, though, that "want" itch will come along and I think that I might want something a little faster with a bit more reach. But I have also "Spomered" the numbers on the three other cartridges I'm always thinking about (7-08, .280, 280AI) using one of the online ballistic calculators. What I've found is that the drop and energy differentials generally bear out my anecdotal evidence; meaning that from what I can tell, the .280AI picks up about twenty or so yards of MPBR on a 7x57, loaded up to modern pressure and using the same bullet, but it generally takes considerably more powder to get there. Again, for my style of hunting it's just not worth it. YMMV.

As for bullet weights and components, my suggestion is to follow the sound advice of finding out what your rifle shoots best and go from there. I have bullets that range from 100- to 175-grains from a lot of different manufacturers, and once I know what a particular rifle shoots best I load a bunch...or at least enough to continually put pork on the table where the hunting bullets are concerned. As for brass (someone asked about it): Prvi has given me the best consistency and life, using the candle method of annealing to keep it pliable, and unless I'm trying to hotrod a load the primer pockets stay nice and snug. The nice thing about Prvi's brass is that it's not only inexpensive but also generally available when a lot of other brands aren't.

I suppose that the bottom line is that this old cartridge still does for me what it's been doing for over a hundred years: consistently putting meat on the table without splitting one's ears or rattling one's teeth. With every birthday I appreciate that just a little bit more.

RM

A hundred boxes of ammo could last more than one, or two rifles. 😃
7x64 is retro cool, kind of an Anti-CM 😈

I once had a SAUM build mapped out based upon a dozen boxes of clearance ammo. Unfortunately, the deal fell through on the donor action.
My bad 😥 and a lack of patient faith.

My 280 with a 22" barrel averages 2980 with the 160 Trophy Bonded Tip and 60 grains of RL26...and using Quickload put it at 3 fps difference at 64K....

Well...

.270 Win/150 gr. - in the same length Bbl., because it is readily available, inexpensive, already loaded hot, and can now be twisted and fed heavy, high BC bullets as well.




GR

I handled a Savage 110UL in 280AI yesterday, nice lite handling rifle, but I couldnt get passed the price tag.....

I can’t imagine someone talking me out of my 280’s - same with 30-06’s! The 280 AI is a good cartridge, but there are so many cartridges in this power range. I like 257 R, 25-06, 7mm-08, 7x57, 270, 308, 280, 280AI, 7mm RM, 30-06, 300 magnums (all but the short ones). Then there’s the cartridges with a little more power and larger caliber where cast bullets will also work.

Favorite rifles/cartridges, I think, win the position of favorite when a shooter has an exceptionally accurate rifle. Time was when there wasn’t many good bullets for certain bores but that isn’t much of a problem. I like the 35 calibers and the 375 calibers…

I recall a writer who wrote that the cartridge had to have a belt for him. Another written statement - bullets need to travel better than 3,000 FPS.

Then there was a short guy from Idaho with a big hat that was fond of big cartridges - handgun and rifle.

Another praised the 270 and yet another praised the 280

One writer wrote “Use enough gun!” (I like that guy).

Now it seems there are shooters that want to use the absolute minimum cartridge. I’m not in this group by the way!

My 700 BDL 7mm RM is very accurate as my 280’s, my 270’s, my 30-06’s and many other rifle/cartridge combo’s. For more power my 300 Weatherby and 200 grain Noslers are under 1/2 MOA. If more power is needed for me my 375’s or even my 45-90.

My point, there’s many choices and each of our experiences and our rifles make us love a certain combination. Every time we hunt we get a little more set in our beliefs that this is the best “Rifle, best bullet, scope, load etc.

280 vs. 280AI to me, I want the most accurate one.

Bugger,

"One writer wrote “Use enough gun!” (I like that guy)."

That writer was Robert Ruark. He quoted the professional hunter on his first safari, Harry Selby--who was 27 years old and used a .416 Rigby for his "stopping" rifle. Ruark had NEVER hunted big game before, which may seem amazing, but there it is. He was a bird hunter before then.

That's a nice sentiment, but Selby also used a 6.5x54 Mannlicher-Schoenauer carbine as his "light" rifle.

Could also quote a bunch of stuff from other professional hunters, but instead will mention that I wrote and published an article around 20 years ago titled, "Use Just Enough Gun"--which involved my observation of many hunters around the world who used "too much gun" for their recoil tolerance, because they'd read too much BS--including Ruark. So they believed a hard-kicking magnum was far better for hunting big game.

This article was a result not only of my observation of other hunters, but of knowing many African professional hunters and American guides, but having guided and hunted quite a bit myself. I provided several examples, perhaps the simplest of which was a European guy I was in camp with in northern British Columbia, who brought a .300 Winchester Magnum. He'd hunted Stone sheep with the same outfitter a couple years earlier, using a 7x64, which is about like the .280 Remington. But he was hunting elk and moose on this second trip, and decided a .300 Winchester Magnum was absolutely required.

When we did the standard "scope check" on the camp's 100-yard range the first afternoon, he shot an 18" group with his new .300--and required around 18 shots to kill the three animals he took--a moose, caribou and elk. He would have done MUCH better with his 7x64 with good bullets--which with decent shot placement would have been plenty for any of those three animals.

When I worked the gun counter, the comment that would always send the crew into barely contained fits of laughter was, “ recoil doesn’t bother me”.
Especially if they had worked sight in days at the range.

MD : Did your “Use Just Enough Gun” article get reworked into a Chapter of the 3 Gacks ?
I ask because my googling your name with the title is yielding everything but …

MD
I was familiar with Robert Ruark quoting that.
I’ve seen more people using too small cartridges or perhaps poor bullet choices in marginal cartridges. I am sure that there’s many people that use too large, just not my experience.
A guy I new in the service wanted me to sight in his rifle. He couldn’t believe that I kept hitting the target. Then he tried the target was taped to a 5 gallon pail. He hit the pail on about the 15th shot at about 25 yards and then quickly said, “good enough”. I don’t think it was recoil that caused him to miss, just really poor marksmanship (243). I also saw a guy in boot camp that placed the bullets in the ground about ten yards in front of the firing line. The DI’s asked (ha ha) me to get him shooting. His method was to close both eyes and jerk the trigger as the rifle was moving down rapidly. The rifle was a M-14. Again a rifle with very little recoil. He was scared to shoot the rifle and was not just trying to get out of being a grunt. It’s my believe that almost anyone can handle the recoil from a 243 or a M-14.
I knew a guy in Colorado that used a 6mm on elk. He didn’t know that some loads were not appropriate for elk, he just bought what was on the shelf. He often said that when you shoot elk you gotta keep shooting until they fall over. When he borrowed a 280 I gave a friend and the 280 was loaded appropriately he dropped a cow elk on the first shot. He went out and bought a 280 directly there after. He said that he thought the 280 was going to be brutal but was a pussy cat.
I read over and over about guys bringing too much gun and can’t shoot them well. I have never ever seen this on close to 60 years of hunting. But these stories continue. I guess that it must be true.

It's in OBSESSIONS OF A RIFLE LOONY, the book we published in 2010--and which still sells steadily.

Bugger,

I've seen FAR more hunters being over-gunned than under-gunned, probably because I've hunted a lot in areas where game larger than deer is common--and often reputed to be tougher to kill, whether elk in Montana or plains game in Africa.

One of other quotes I believe is in "Just Enough Gun" came from an outfitter I know here in Montana, who guides primarily in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, where both elk and grizzlies are common. I hunted black bear there with him one year, and after noticing he carried a .375 H&H asked if it was for grizzly protection. He said no, it was to finish off elk so many of his clients wounded with the brand-new .338 Winchester Magnums they'd bought for their long dreamed-for elk hunt. Have seen that sort of thing myself on other elk hunts here and there--including the guy cited above who brought a new .300 Winchester instead of his familiar 7x64.

Another interesting experience was a month-long cull hunt in South Africa with a dozen other hunters. (I was there the whole time; they came in a pair of two-week shifts.) Many were rifle loonies, so brought a "deer rifle" for the smaller plains game, and a rifle chambered for a bigger cartridge for the larger animals. A total of 185 animals were taken, ranging from pronghorn-size springbok to one eland and two Cape buffalo weighing well over 1000 pounds.

Within a few days the majority of the hunters had put aside their "big" rifles and were using their smaller rifles on everything, which usually meant animals up to elk size, such as kudu, gemsbok, black wildebeest and zebra. The last three also have reputations for being tough to kill.
One guy quit using his .375 H&H and stuck with his 7mm magnum. Another gave up his 9.3x62 and used his 7x57 on everything. Another guy only brought one rifle, a lightweight .300 WSM, and by the end of the safari was wounding a lot of game. In fact he shot the jaw off a kudu, which was only found after he left, and it had died of thirst.

In fact the only guy I remember who primarily used his "big" rifle almost entirely was one of the buffalo hunters, who's "light" rifle was a .325 WSM--which his PH eventually told the guy he couldn't use anymore, because the factory bullets didn't penetrate well. He could really shoot his .375, and continued to do so on everything from warthogs to wildebeest.

Of course, part of the problem was that African safaris tend to involve far more game and hence shooting than North American hunts. Guys who shot their bigger rifle just fine on the first animal or two often started flinching, partly because African safaris often involve more check-shooting to make sure a rifle's still zeroed after bouncing around in a Land Cruiser for a week or more.

But have seen plenty of it when guiding myself, which I did some in Montana during my 30s and 40s. Many times a guy who's hunted whitetails all his life in some eastern state would leave his .243 or .308 or whatever at home, and bring a brand-new magnum, because of a belief the ranges will be long, so a more powerful rifle's needed even for pronghorns or mule deer. I even loaned one guy my .220 Swift to use on pronghorn, because he could not hit them with his magnum--and by then had developed such a flinch he couldn't hit anything with the outfitter's .25-06 either.

I gotta admit I only have hunted up to Moose in size. Elk quite a bit more and the only example of a miss-sized cartridge/load was the 6mm with off the shelf factory ammo.
I did see a guy using a 375 H&H on elk but it worked for him fine.
Poor marksmanship can’t always be blamed on too much gun - in my experience it’s not enough practice. I also believe that there are hunters that shouldn’t be hunting anything bigger than squirrels with 22LR’s.
I don’t understand going on a thousands of dollars’ hunt and not practicing. If you can’t hit a basketball at a hundred yards, take up table tennis or badminton. Don’t go on a once in a life time hunt when you can’t hit what your hunting.

Having said that, I know that my 77 Ruger in 416 Rigby recoiled too much for me - instant head ache.

Thanks for locating that for me. Obsessions should continue to sell , it’s loaded with great information !
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