Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters "Best" factory caliber for a Sendero?

*L* That's hittin' the ole nail on the head!

I've worked with a handful of standard weights 300 RUG's and not once did I feel like they were tough to deal with....?

Dober

Same here, Dober

300 ultra for sure,second choice 300 win

Jeff, get a 300 Win. Mag. It's one of the most inherently-accurate cartridges of all time, it's not at all fussy, and it's very easy to shoot and work with at the loading bench. It's so good that it's been used by something like 85% of all the 1,000 yd. Wimbleton Award winners since the mid-1960s, and it's still used by all branches of the U.S. military. On top of that, it's been use extensively on all of the world's big game species on every continent, and it's been used by countless serious trophy hunters, including various Weatherby Award winners, as their main go-to rifle. It's history and its pedigreed speaks for itself, and it's my personal favorite big game cartridge of all-time.

If for some incomprehensible or theoretical reason you need more reach, the truth is you don't need more gun - you need to stalk closer. Novel, old fashoned idea, huh?

AD

Allenday is on the money. I was fortunate to come across a stored 7STW, love it. My second choice would be the WM

Jeff O,

Your avatar is disturbing

At 8-1/2 pounds before the scope & rings & mounts, with realistic loads I'm thinking you would be happiest with the 300 Win and want to hang on to it longer. When conisdering everything you mention it just seems to be the comfortable match. For me that 264 would be calling - different circumstances.

I looked at Load From a Disk to compare powder charges if you loaded the .300 RUM to .300 Win Mag velocities. Assume you want to shoot a 180 grain Partition in the neighborhood of 3,200 fps. In the .300 Win Mag you get there with approximately 75 gr. of H4831, 71 gr of N-204 or 79 gr of AA3100. In the .300 RUM, it takes approximately 92 gr. of IMR7828, 97 gr. of H-1000 or 87 grains of AA3100. In other words, 10 to 25 percent more powder is required just to equal .300 Win Mag velocities. If things like this are important to you...

Yeah, well, you should see what happened to ERNIE!

-jeff

Thanks for all the info... as could be predicted, the advice is all over the map! :-)

I've got a buyer for the rifle I'd be selling to fund this, so, just need to get my head straight on what I want to do and then... do it.

With the scope and Jewell trigger already in hand this one is easy compared to some rifles I've contemplated...

Thanks for the direct comparison, mudhen. I was going to look in my manuals and see just how downloadable the 300 RUM was. Looks like for the same speed, a little more recoil due to the extra ejecta from the extra powder.

I'm inclined to roll the dice on a factory barrel. I've had good luck with my last couple Remingtons; as Steelhead says, you never know, and 'Fire reports in general seem to indicate that people do pretty darn well with the stock Sendero's. At any rate, I'd be amazed (in a bad way) if it didn't at least shoot well enough to have some real fun shooting out the factory barrel!

So... in terms of barrel life... do you guys think there'd be any significant difference between a 300 RUM and a 7mm RUM, all else equal?

-jeff

Nope there won't be a signigicant amount of diff between barrel life.

Ele is easy to take care of at range, the windage is a bit tougher, that's why I'd take a serious look at one of the RUG's for this task. Plus I like the extra whomp on downrange critters.

I'd still go big 7 or big 33, with a rig this heavy recoil is not gonna be an issue.

Dober

I've got the 7STW (and love it)and it is one hellova round. Been shooting the round in a Browning A-Bolt for about 10 years. I picked up a Sendero recently and shot @1000 yards and myself and others were very surprised. We were doing a fun shoot and they didn't measure group size but a man or animal at that range would be no problem. It outshot all but one of the custom guns there, most were 1000 yard only rifles with 20 moa bases and LR scopes using Caldwell rock type front rests and bags in the rear. I shot prone(no bench, military facility) off of a Harris bipod. I didn't even have match grade bullets, 160 gr. Nosler accu-bonds and H1000 as prescribed on the powder bottle.

Both rifles are braked and are loud but don't kick even the sporter barrel A-bolt. Did I mention that I like this rifle/round?

I like 26 caliber, 28 calibers, and 30 calibers the best.

Mark,

What's a "RUG"? Do you mean the Remington Ultra Mag's?

You think 2000 rounds is realistic from a RUM?

-jeff

get the 300 win mag. i used one for 3 years as my beanfield rifle here on the farm. with 180gr ballistic tips, it was very effective on deer way across the field. the weight is an issue if you plan on carrying the gun any distance. i wouldn't take it elk hunting unless i was sitting on a mountain top and someone else carried it up the mountain. mine was very accurate and effective, but the weight thing bothered me so i sent it down the road. replaced it with a standard 270 win. never looked back!

Jeff,

Once upon a time before there were such things in the marketplace I built a sendero rifle. Its on a Rem M721 action pillar-bedded in a McM. synthetic stock with a Douglass XX No. 4 contour air-gauged barrel. I built it to shoot metallic silhouette (to 500 meters). Cartridge was 7 mm Rem Express, or .280 Rem nowadays. Trigger is a Canjar. From the name you can see it was a while back. Since it was target work, I converted the action to single shot. The stock is hunting shape. For MS I used a Weaver T-6 and twisted the elevation knob at each range.

It shoots really well, the recoil is moderate and barrel life is thousands of rounds. You could build such a rifle pretty easily.

jim

What do you mean by 200 rounds?

Did you mean to have an extra zero on there?

Yep! Thanks. Fixed it.

-jeff

Whew....Made me wonder, as my RUM is coming up on 200 rounds right quick....And the groups are getting smaller, not bigger.....

You should see my 300 RUM that I just had built and picked up the other day. Makes a Sendero II look really fat...

Just waiting on the rings and will be snapping a few pics.