Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles 358 NORMA MAGNUM

Does anyone have any experience with the 358 Norma Mag, ie: on game performance, recomended barrel lenght, recoil energy, should i maybe install a muzzle break. Basicly i have run across one and iam thinking of picking it up. I know ammo is spendy but i figured i would roll my own. any imputs would great.

Its a good medium round, on most game you will not tell the differance from a 338Win to a 375HH. Bullet selection would be one consideration to stay away from it but if you shoot a quality 250gr bullet any thing in AK is in trouble.

I'd venture to guess that it could probably be loaded "down" to Whelen velocities without much trouble. Bullets don't seem to come apart with the Whelen, so you shouldn't have a big issue there. Or, if you want full bore, just use a good bullet, say a Barnes or Swift. I'd recommend that anyway for the stuff you might run into in AK.

Anxious for additional responses as I have a Mark X that thinks it needs a new .358 barrel. I only wish it had a std. bolt face.

I've wanted to build one for a while. I think the round makes a lot of sense and would take anything you're likely to hunt with style.

If I can get of the 'puter,I'll head to the shop and work on mine. Mine is long necked so I don't have to trim 300WM brass. RickF has one and has worked with it.

I've had one for several years now, and have used it just enough to think I'm an expert.

As has been said already, there's probably not much difference in performance between the 338, 340, 358, 9.3X6X or the 375's. Mine was a rebarrel of a 300Wby, and the 338 seemed like half a step. I wanted to take a step up, yet still be flat shooting and manageable recoil-wise . It seems to do that. With a 225 grain TSX at 2950, I don't wish I had a 300mag in my hands on long range shots.

Recoil and muzzle brakes: Only you can answer that as recoil tolerances are different. If you can handle a 30-06 with 180 grainers or a 300 mag, you can probably handle a 358 Norma. It is worth noting that the 225 grain bullets kick less than the 250's. If I haven't used my Norma for a few months, it really gets my attention at first if I'm using the full house 250 grainers. It does take a bit of practice to be comfortable with it. It's also a very easy cartridge to load down, so you can start lower and work up.

Muzzle brake? If I need to resort to a muzzle brake, I'd definitely go with a lighter recoiling rifle. I want nothing to do with the things; I like my hearing too much.

It is a very easy cartridge to load for. 225 grainers can beat 2900 fps, and 250 grainers can get to 2800 fps.

Barrel Length? Relative to bore size this is not a large cartridge. It will work very well with a 22" barrel. Mine is 23 1/2" because I find rifles balance better for me with a slightly longer barrel and because I like round numbers.

Bottom line? It's a great cartridge and mine is not for sale. Re reloading, I'd use Winchester 300Win brass and trim the neck to fit your chamber. You can use 338 Win brass but then you are blowing the shoulder forward, I don't like doing that as it weakens the brass; it is essentially headspace until the first firing fireforms it. With the 300Win you are pushing the shoulder back a bit which positively fits the shoulder junction to fit your chamber. Much easier to do than to explain it.

Hope this helps.

RickF has it right. Use 300 Win Mag brass. (He is right on the other stuff too).

Also, for cheap range practice, I load pistol bullets intended for .38 Special and .357 Magnum revolvers. If you want, you can load these bullets up to fearsome velocities.l One (novelty!) load I once used had 125gr Hornady pistol bullets (intended for 1200fps) flying out at about 2900fps. More realistically, a 180gr pistol bullet makes a reasonable practice round at fairly low cost.

I also have a .375 H&H, but you have to cast your own bullets to have cheap range practice. With the .358 Norma Mag, a box of pistol bullets and you are good to go!

John

I love mine. My 358 Norma Mag is my favorite rifle built by David Van Horn out of Montana. I'll never part with it. Built on a Winnie classic action. 26" barrel bedded in a McMillan G&H black/white swirly stock. My hunting load is a 225-gr Swift A-Frame.

Nice bear!

I have one that my GS just finished, it is on a Brno action with a Douglas barrel. If I can sneak away on Tuesday, I will go get it!

Can't wait to get it going!

Hey thanks guys, i decided against picking that particular gun up. But i did buy a ruger M77 (tang saftey) in 7mm that as soon as it gets here it will way to Mcgowen to get a new barrel chambered to 358 Norma Mag. iam thinking 23 inch 4140 barrel, bead blast the barrel and action dura coat everything drop it into a Bell and Carlson stock (bed the action of course).

one ?

Rick you said use 300 win mag brass , why not 358 norma brass, is that due to the cost or what?

Yes. I am in Sweden (home of the .358 Norma of course) and I get get .358 Norma Mag brass easily (and it is high quality Norma brass). However, even here it costs more than .300 Win brass.

I have also necked up a bunch of 7mm Rem Mag brass to .358 Norma Mag. Not ideal (the neck ends up a tad short) but I had way more 7mm Rem brass than I needed... and I was itching to shoot my new .358 Norma mag, so I used what I had!

Do not let the fact that .358 Norma brass is not common nor cheap interfere with your plans to get one! The cost savings in practice bullets put the .358 Norma ahead of the .338 Win Mag and the .375 H&H Mag. At least, that is how I justified buying a .358 Norma after I already had the other two calibres!

Please do not hesitate to contact me or Rick if you need help in justifying another rifle....

John

I figured i would just buy 358 brass from midway usa.


"Please do not hesitate to contact me or Rick if you need help in justifying another rifle"

Thanks for the support..LOL

what kind of optics would you put on a 358 nm, ie: 1.5x6 3x9 2x7 ???

Greydog extended the chamber neck to take untrimmed 300WM brass.We call it the Long Neck. I have a Burris 1.5x6 Safari for it.I was looking for the Bushnell 1.5x6 4200,but it was discontinued.Back to work on it.

My .358 has been in the shop since last July, I haven't seen it yet, and she still won't chamber anything. Turns out my gunsmith got his reamer secondhand and when someone resharpened it, the reamer ended up too narrow. Now I've got to wait another 3 months before PTG can get a new one done! Kills me. I play with the big cases I have loaded up with 250 gr Partitions anytime a buddy asks me about the gun. It was supposed to be my elk rifle this year and I don't know if I'll ever see it.
Oh it was a Remington 700 in 7mm Rem Mag, 24 inch Douglas 1:12 twist #3 contour, Bell and Carlson Alaska Hunter II stock green with black webbing, Talley lightweight mounts nikon 3-9X40. Now the smithy has to set the barrel back to reream it. Can't wait to have it done.

You might be sorry you asked.

One reason is that Norma brass is typically very soft.

The second reason: I wrote this for a friend a few years back, and was smart enough to save it. Doesn't mean I'm right, but I have been incredibly impressed with the resulting cartridge.



Here's another option for you, and the way I went when I had a 358 Norma built about 5 years ago. I had the neck reamed out to a case length of 2.61". This was accomplished after standard chambering with the 358 Norma reamer, by then running in a 35 Whelen reamer with it's longer case neck, to the 2.61" chamber length. Why?? This lets me use untrimmed WW 300 Win brass. Just a pass through the FL sizer with well lubed case necks, and the brass is ready to go.

I use standard FL dies, in my case Redding, which work fine. The sizer die works exactly the same way, although I had the expander ball tapered more gently to make it easier to neck up the cases. To set the die I simply kept screwing the die into the press bit by bit, until the 300 cases had the shoulder pushed back far enough to fit the chamber. This works fine for resizing the fired cases as well, of course.

The seater die has to be backed off a bit, and the bullet seating stem screwed in farther to compensate. Otherwise it would crimp the case neck......a lot.

My motivation to do this was to use the 300 Win brass with the longer shoulder. A lot of people use the 338 Win brass, but we all know the shoulder is shorter on 338 Win brass. I didn't like the idea of fireforming brass by blowing the shoulder forward, hence weakening the brass. It made more sense to push a shoulder back, maintaining positive headspace while fireforming. So I thought, seriously, about using WW 300 Win brass, then trimming about 1/10" off the resized case, which made no sense. Then I hit upon having the neck extended so I wouldn't have to trim the hell out of the new brass.

It just makes more sense. With the longer neck, more of that long bullet is held under tension, just improving on the original design. It lets me use the inexpensive, great quality WW 300 Win brass, instead of buying the much more expensive, and historically soft Norma brass.

This was my only complaint with the original 358 Norma case design, in a mag action with room to spare, why saddle it with that short neck? The new case can be described as a 358 Norma case with a 35 Whelen neck, really the best of both worlds. If you do have this done, all it takes is running a 35 Whelen chamber reamer into your 358 Norma chamber. The shoulder/case aren't affected, just the neck is lengthened. Just be sure the neck dimensions of the reamers are similar, Norma neck dimensions are notorious for being on the "large" side. My chamber has a 2.6" "trim-to" length, with a max length of 2.61". This lets me trim the newly sized-up cases just enough to square the case mouths, instead of spending hours trimming.

This also lets you use 358 Norma factory rounds, it's essentially a freebore with those. It's such an obvious improvement to the standard 358 Norma case I can't understand why everybody doesn't do it!

I have picked up a bit of case capacity. With 250 grainers I get 2800, but my standard load is the 225 TSX at 2950 fps. Let�s just say it �impresses� game, and shoots really flat as well.

And if you need help spending that cash, we're here for you pal!


And one other thing, that long neck is nice with bullets with circumferential grooves like the North Fork and the TSX. It gives you more bullet contact with that nice long neck, which is never a bad thing with a fair amount of recoil and heavy bullets. Maybe not necessary to help keep the bullets in place but it certainly doesn't hurt anything.

I run a VX-III 1.75-6X32 on mine, and it's perfect. But it hasn't escaped me that it lives on 4X. I would be just as happy with a straight 4X.

I got my first 358 Norma, a Husqvarna, in 1969. Have killed many, many, tons of game with it since then. Have built a few and bought a few more since then, and expect I will always have one.

Be sure to try 67.5 gr of IMR 4895 with 250 gr Speer or Hornady spitzers. At more than 2800 fps, and close to inch groups in every rifle I have tried it in, it is simply a superb hunting cartridge that shoots flatter than a 30-06.

Ted