Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters ELMER KEITHS 280 OKH RIFLE - SEEKING INFO

Indeed a very interesting thread. I was looking through a 1975 Gun Digest and found an article by Bob Hagel called Wildcats and Wildcatters. There are several pics of some of Charley O'neil's wildcats but none of your 280 OKH.

One is shown as a 7mm on the full length 375HH case but the neck on your case is much longer.

Anyway , looks like the old gun still shoots good. Good luck with it......

Yes, this 280 OKH cartridge is slightly different from that one. It has a longer neck and a radius at the neck-shoulder junction. As history has shown, Roy Weatherby adopted this radius for his line of cartridges. And he reckoned that if "one" radius is good, "two" must be better, so he added a second radius at the shoulder-body junction. Interestingly, Roy also believed in, and used, a free-bore in his chamberings, just like this one does, albeit Roy's free-bore was not as long as this one. Roy's freebore was about 1 inch, this one is 1-15/16 inches long.



I'm not sure what Elmer and Charley were thinking by using such a long free-bore. Perhaps that's why the project with this particular 280 OKH chambering ended and was never devoloped beyond this "one" experimental rifle.

I think I'm going to take it deer hunting next week and see what happens.

Does that case have any taper at all?

Yes, it has a slight taper. Base dimension just ahead of the belt is .513 dia and dimension across the shoulder is .502 dia. That works out to about a .011 difference, or a .005 taper. That's why it has a volume thats only .8g less than a 7mm STW and a 12.6g more than a 7mm Rem Mag.