Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game What's Your Favorite 338 Winnie Bullet?

21" McWhorter, heavy contour. Can drive nails with it.

225 grain Hornady Interlock.

The 225 gr Trophy Bonded Bear Claw. Good penetration, wide wound channel,
and little if any bloodshot meat. Also, few if any bits of copper in the wound channel.

I only have 50 left and then i will start using NPT's or buy some new factory loads.

Elk, Mule deer, whitetail deer.

My stainless synthetic Mod 70 wears a 22 inch Kreiger #4.
I wouldn't go back to the original 26 inch.

69.0g Hodgdon Hybrid 100V

2742fps from a 22" barrel.

For handy I prefer 22" to 24", regardless of cartridge, but you lose a bit of velocity.

I'm running 225g bullets at 2742fps through mine and could probably push them a little faster but don't see the need.

L-to-R, .338WM, .300WM, .30-06:

210 Partitions and 22" barrels. Had 3 different 338's cut at that length.

The 210 Partition is a lot like a 130 gr 270 Win bullet... it works out of proportion to what it's "numbers" indicate.

At least in my experience.

All I ever killed with the 338 were elk, but haven't used a 338 for 15 years now.

Never found its extra recoil necessary for me or its extra punch necessary for elk...

I have had bbls. from 26" down to 22.5", my definite favourite is the Dakota 76 contour at .340" muzzle diameter at 23".

Shorter tubes do lose velocity and are also pretty loud, but, a 23" will run 250s at 2725 fps-mv, with 76-77 RE-22, a top load and an accurate one in all my rifles.

YMMV, but, if I wanted to shoot 200-210 bullets, I would run a .300 mag. and actually do this with my two .300s, however, I much prefer a .338WM to any .300 mag.

I bought a Ruger 77 .338 Win. Mag., 24" bbl., in 1974. I have killed four elk and one Mule deer with it. I used Norma MRP powder and the Hornady 225 grains Interlok on two elk and Norma MRP with the Nosler Partition 210 grains on two elk and one Mule deer.

They worked perfectly, except with a Nosler Partition 210 grains on one elk where I shot badly requiring a five hour tracking job to finally find and finish the job due to my poor shooting.

With those two loads I cooked up the Ruger would shoot 3/4" off the bench when I did my part. BTW, I had it Magna Ported not long after I bought it. Tamed the recoil a bit, seemed to me.

L.W.

Good stuff.

Anybody else, besides Coyote Hunter have pics of your rifles??

You've got the bug bad

Rem AWR





Add an antelope to the list that I'd forgotten

The great 250 gr Swift-A-Frame loaded to 2750 fps with H-4350, elk, deer and even a 30 lb football pig have handily died from it.

BTW, no bullet recoveries either.

For the 250 NPT fans...

Brian Pearce has published a load with RL22 that gets 2852 fps with 24".

Yup, the 77-RE-22 does this and with no issues in MY rifles, but, I load a tad lighter at 76 which does 2800 and change from 25" P-64 tubes.

This load is the lightest "kicking" powerful load from a medium bore magnum that I have ever tried and I see no point in underloading a rifle as why carry a heavier gun if you are not going to use everything it is capable of giving?

Yup, I was bitten. Got a Rem 700 barreled action headed my way.

I reload for a buddy with 210gr TSX FB and watched him punch three of them lengthwise through the biggest Kodiak bear I have ever been around. The first shot was broadside and it hit plenty of bone and left like the three end-on bullets.

He also shoots a big bull moose every year and usually a caribou, too with the same bullet. He likes it a lot.

I have yet to see any Accubond go through a brown bear. Every one has been caught, 338, 358, and 375 calibers... Not a lot of them, but enough to know it would not come close to making my list.

Not in my .338.
I find internet loads consistently not the same as my Oehler 35P readings, with H 4831sc being the most overrated of the overrated, in this chambering.

Only Rel 17 has exceeded 2800fps using this bullet in my own, and a range of other .338's I have tested.

Hence the comment you commonly see here, "YMMV".

For those that like the heavy bullets, I tried a couple recently that shot well in the .338 case:

265gn Barnes TTSX over 67gn of Rel 17 and Fed 215's generated 2689fps.

265gn Barnes LRX with the same load generated 2659fps.

Moving up to the 285gn Barnes TSX, 65gn of Rel 17 got "me" 2605fps.

Rifle is a Weatherby Mark V with 24" barrel.

John

AussieGunwriter,

This isn't an "internet load"

Reference Handloader 236, August-September 2005, pg 101 by Brian Pearce.

To summarize, 76.7gr RL22, Fed215, W-W cases gets 2852 fps from his 24" 77RS. Brian states, "This load contains a bit more powder than most manuals list, but pressures are within SAAMI limits, and it has worked perfectly in several rifles."

I have no experience with this load or Brian's rifles. I was just posting interesting info as another data point for others. I've got no interest in this bullet whatsoever.

But, I've gotten a lot of good info from Pearce, and Handloader magazine.

YMMV

Jason