Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire 358 Win

I have four rifles chambered to the .358. I did have five. It was a 98 Mauser made by Kodiak. They took milsurp Mausers, put them in cheap maple stocks and rebarreled them. Probably as cheaply as possible. I had the one in .358 which never shot worth a damn and a matching gun in .243 Win. which was a tackdriver. I also shot one belonging to a friend chambered to the .308 Norma magnum. For a cartridge that was so unpopular, when I put it on a table at a gun show with a $300 price tag there were several guys that wanted it like right now.

The keepers were two Ruger M77 tangers, an early Browning BLR and a Savage M99. Funny thing is the two lever guns outshot the two Rugers by a wide margin. The lever guns had 1 in 12" twists and the Rugers are 1 in 16" twist. I never could get decent groups from those two Rugers.

Like Rocky, I place a lot of the blame on some gun writers that considered the .358 just to be another short range woods cartridge. I just happen to think it's quite a bit better than that. I also admit when I got a .35 Whelen the .358s went into semi-retirement.
PJ

Myself, I've got a really nice NH model 70 Featherweight in 358 Win. and a Classic Stainless in 358 STA. Have always liked the 35's...

Phil

Mine above is built on a pre-64 M70 action. It shoots the 200 gr TTSX pretty well. Years ago I had a "fake" pre-64 M70 in 358 Win that was a pretty good remake.

The 358 Winchester is a very under rated cartridge. It is deadly as a woods gun with the 180s and 200s. And is a real killer out to 300 yards, without a single premium bullets. Standard Win or Rem bullets work just great.

A M-96 conversion to a 358 Win I am currently working on. This is the after fitting it to feed, photo of the brass, dummy ammo, action, bolt, scope base and bolt shroud mods.


This is the insetted and glass bedded anction annd bottom metal with metal cerakoted stage, muzzle is threaded and with an AR brake on as a thread protector.

One of my "holy Grail" guns would be a Browning BLR in .358 Win. I can't think of a better combo for Eastern Woodlands deer and black bear.

The deer hunting rules have changed in several States. I would think anything .357 and bigger would be a hit. Unfortunately, the demand for anything but .350 legend is small. It's a great round but it would be competing with the plentiful .350.

kwg

I have two.
Bottom is a 358 Savage 99
The lone picture is a Custom left hand Montana Rifle Co. in a Serengeti laminated Stock.
The Winchester Model 88 is a close mate to a 358, I had it re-barreled to a 338/308
All of them work great in the deer woods.

Marketing. Anything Old sucks. Gotta be new so it can be hyped. Hype drives sales Sales bring that sweet vaginal nectar called money. Money makes. the world go round


No one NEEDS a new caliber. Its want and money.

Where is the demand for the .350 ? It had a year jimp on the Buckhammer, and even with the Remington curse, Buckhammer sales have surpassed because of bullet selection.

Going 9mm was a HUGE mistake. That"s why the .400 Legend is getting all the hype. The .350 is dead. Keep an eye out for bargains.

I have at least four Savage 99's in 358 from 16" to 24" barrels. I like the 16" carbine the best. They are deadly accurate and hell on bears with the 180 Barnes ttsx. Piles them right the hell up.

It is a great round, and remarkably effective. Mine was a Ruger 77 that shot factory 250 grain loads sub MOA out of the box. It went down the block some time ago, mostly 'cause I didn't get to do any tracking, each and every time I pulled the trigger.

The .358 win. Is NOT a heavy kicker. The .358 Norma Magnum which was grabbing press at the same time is.

Ignorance by J.O. Public thinking the two were the same , helped doom the round.

Murphy's law 2.0 , if "stoopdity" can screw up a good thing. It will. (Ref: C19)

Gee! It's always been astonishing to me that so many hunters apparently think all "gun writers" think alike--perhaps because they have only read a few "gun writers," or haven't read any for years.

My experience with the .358 goes back over half a century, when one of my hunting mentors had a Savage 99 Featherweight .358. He was born and raised in New York and started hunting whitetails in the Catskills. Back then the common wisdom was that heavy, medium-caliber bullets were needed to "shoot through" brush--which has been since proven wrong.

But he still much preferred using the original 250-grain Winchester factory load, for two reasons: It killed deer just as well as the 200-grain load, with less meat damage. That opinion continued after he moved to Montana after high school, and he started hunting elk as well.

There was a reason for this back then: The 250-grain factory load held together and penetrated deeper than the thin-jacketed 200-grain bullets--especially in the thick timber many elk were found back then.

But eventually Winchester discontinued the 250-grain factory load, apparently because too many hunters thought it kicked too much. I started handloading 250-grain round-nose Hornadys for him at that time, which worked perfectly for him on game from close-up timber deer to a big 6x6 bull elk at around 250 yards.

I eventually inherited his rifle when he passed away, too young, and have used it considerably since then. But have also owned two other .358s, both bolt-action Ruger 77s, the second one a stainless/synthetic Mark II, which I used to work up a bunch of "modern" loads for an article in Handloader magazine a while back. It worked great with newer powders, and bullets from 180-250 grains. This article eventually was re-published in 2018 as a chapter in The Big Book of Gun Gack II, which is available through www.riflesandrecipes.com.

Eventually I sold the bolt rifles, and have only hunted with the 99 since then--often with a batch of older 250-grain Hornadys, which still work just fine.

I’d buy one in a sav 99 out of curiosity

Marlin built a lever gun in .41 Rem Mag.
They are rare as hen's teeth!
You can find them on-line, but you best have DEEP pockets!

I would love to have a Ruger M77RS carbine in 358 WIN, but not for the prices they have on GUNBROKER

I've owned 3 rifles in 358 Win, Savage 99A, Savage 99F and a custom 98 Mauser...killed deer with factory 200gr Winchester Silver Tips they hammered deer , but eventually they all went down the road

I have a bobbed barrel (24" down to 22") Savage 99EG in .358 Wn, and it's one of my favorite Whitetail guns. I also hunt the Catskills of NY (not far from Oneonta), the thing is a Deer hammer. I use 200GR Nosler ballistic tip handloads, don't remember the powder charge without consulting notes, but I'm pretty sure i'm using IMR4064. -Tom

In many ways the .308 Winchester was a nearly perfect rifle cartridge. Lots of effort went into necking it up and down for various diameter bullets. the most successful offerings were smaller bullets pushed faster.

What would anyone hunt with a .358 Win, that he wouldn't hunt with the .308 Win? The .358 is, for most porpoises, a chubby, slow .308...

And that is one reason I don’t own one. But thank you for pointing it out. I don’t know if Ruger has plans to make one or not.