Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters 375H&H VS.9.3X62u

Swampy,

Thanks!--both for the compliment and the quotes.

I have used the .375 myself a lot, on animals from small African antelope to Cape buffalo and American bison. It's a great round and I will probably never be without one.

That said, one of the reasons for the .375's popularity is simple longevity, especially in Alaska and Africa. And one of the reasons for its popularity in Africa is that it's the legal minimum for various kinds of big game in certain places.

But these days I find myself using my 9.3x62 in situations where I would have previously used the .375, or even the .338 Winchester Magnum. With modern powders and bullets, the 9.3 does the same things that the .338 and .375 do with 250-300 grain bullets, with somewhat less recoil--and that extra round or two in the magazine.

This is an interesting thread....I always thought of the 9.3 as just a metric Whelen,with the 375H&H being a lot more gun.But apparently,it's a good deal more than that....interesting info here.

The 375 a lot more gun? Is the 280 a lot more gun than the 270?

Sort of like Goldylocks, one is too big, one is too small, one is just right...

according to the ballistic program on my Iphone 4 (Ballistic: Field tactical Edition) its
2253 fps and 2818 ft/lbs, this is at 53 degrees north,29.92 Hg,59F, and 78% humidity at an elevation of 2300feet =/-.
The NAB 9.3 is listed as having a BC of 0.494

Bob,

The 9.3x62 has some slight ballistic advantages over the .35 Whelen that some people find useful.

It has about a 3-4% advantage in velocity when using the same bullet weights, due to the slightly larger powder space and bore diameter. This depends to a certain extent on magazine length. The standard 9.3x62 throat is very long, so a longer (say 3.6", like the one in my CZ) magazine allows for more powder space. This results in about a 100 fps advantage to the 9.3x62 when loaded to modern pressures of 60,000 psi.

Thus 250-grain bullets can be loaded to around 2650-2700 fps in the 9.3, which makes it the equal of the standard 250-grain factory load in the .338. When used with a ballistically efficient bullet like the 250 AccuBond, this turns the old round into a pretty long-ranged cartridge.

At the same time, there are a bunch of 286-grain bullets available in 9.3, most spitzers with pretty high BC's. The 286's can be started at 2500 fps or so at 60,000 psi. The standard 9.3 twist of 1-14 is plenty for stabilizing even the longest of these, such as the TSX.

Many if not most .35 Whelens have a 1-16 twist. This barely stabilizes a 250-grain spitzer, which is why very few manufacturers make bullets heavier than 250 grains in .35. Those that doairly blunt bullets, short enough to stabilize n a 1-16 twist. The 280-grain Swift A-Frame, for instance, is technically spitzer, but has a very blun, flat tip on the point which results in a rather low BC. Top velocity in the Whelen is also about 100 fps less than with 286's in the 9.3x62.

All of this is the typical rifle-loony minutiae-meandering, but it does add up to something near the .375 H&H, usually in a slimmer, lighter package. My own custom-stocked 9.3x62 weighs 8 pounds exactly with a 4x33 Leupold, and doesn't seem to kick as much as either a .338 or .375.