.300 Win Mag: Why the “new” .30 cals can’t compare

ah now there is a fierce rifle cartridge look at that thing it's a 30 cow bullet it's got that famous belt on the back it's got a long column of powder many of you recognize it just by seeing it today we're finally talking about the 300 winchester magnum it's ballistics some very important pros and cons of the cartridge some of its career highlights and can it really stack up against today's more modern 30 cals as you guys know google is doing its very best to censor all the hunting content that's why i'm grateful to hunting clash for sponsoring today's video so hunting clash is a really fun mobile app you can use to get your hunting fix when you're on the go i went and took my family to brazil just a few weeks ago and before they even contacted me about sponsoring this video i downloaded this app and i spent a long time playing it at the airport with my two boys you press the hunt button at the bottom of the screen that takes you into the screen in a beautiful landscape where you get to hunt animals that you're probably never going to get a tag for in real life boom pick your gun you can choose from today's topic the 300 win mag it's cool to be able to see all the different animals in the really good graphics in this game and don't forget when you get the game you can click the link in the description and use code backfire to get some extra goodies as you begin download hunting clash right now by again going in the link in the description please support this channel by supporting our sponsors check out hunting clash first up let's talk rifles chambered in 300 win mag i made a little list of some of my favorite rifle models and as you can see almost everything is now one is red the savage 110 ultralight that frankly they shouldn't make that in a 300 win mag it's just not the right platform for that heavy of a cartridge and then another you'll see i'm marked with kind of a mustard yellow and that's the tikka t3x super light i love that gun i own one of that gun one of those guns i recommend that gun but not chambered in 300 win mag that's it's a terrible idea the tikka t3x super light doesn't handle recoil especially well and so it you just shouldn't get it chambered in 300 mag that's my opinion anyway it wouldn't be my first pick my pick if i were to pick any rifle in 300 win mag it's probably going to be the sako s20 i love the sako s20 very cool gun but it's pretty heavy and because of that i usually don't recommend it for most cartridges but in a 300 win mag that's probably a feature right it has a great thumb hole stock that's just awesome really really like that has some cool features to it sako makes great rifles that probably be my pick but there are a lot of good rifles to pick from all right next category can the 300 win mag stack up against the competition so there's a lot of competition to talk about i mean there's the 300 drum the 300 weatherby mag 30 nosler 30 out 6 just under it and the big one that everybody's asking me about today it's the 300 prc so let's take them one at a time generally i tell people do not buy a 300 prc unless you know you need a 300 prc 300 prc is awesome it has a match grade chamber it has all the modern case design that you would want for those very long high bc bullets but it's even more recoil and even more powder and even less efficient than the 300 win mag and so if you're a hunter where the 300 win mag is already gonna kill anything you pointed at why go to more at that point like why choose that and so in general i would say for a hunter don't pick the 300 prc i would generally say pick the 300 win mag ammo is way cheaper and way more available guns are more available that's a tiny bit less recoil to me it's a more versatile offering for the hunter but if you know you want all the benefits of a 300 prc and i'm among you i would love to buy one myself if i could find ammo then yeah go get the 300 prc the 300 wsm now that's a cool cartridge i honestly would pick the 300 wsm over the 300 the 300 win mag why because it's the same ballistics but the 300 wsm is in a short action cutting two inches off your barrel on average and a little bit more efficient on powder to see achieve the same velocities all right category number three the 300 win mag is a long action now it's on the long side of a long action but it's not a magnum action like the 300 prc and that's an advantage it's going to fit into a standard 30.6 length you know the average case overall length is 3.34 inches and so it just fits in a lot of different rifles without going to a magnum action number four is really just a cool fact that i want to share with you compare a 223 remington you know from your ar-15 to a 300 win mag at 100 yards your ar-15 produces as much power as the 300 win mag can produce at 900 yards this thing has some power right and so even at very extended distances i'm not shooting game at 900 yards the 300 win mag can absolutely hold its own that's why it's been so popular with military snipers in fact chris kyle had this to say about the 300 win mag i use the 300 win mag for most of my kills it's an excellent all-around cartridge whose performance allows for superb accuracy as well as stopping power if it's good enough for america's greatest sniper it's probably good enough for me next is barrel length often a 300 win mag is going to come with a 26 inch barrel but it's still very effective even if you chop that thing down into 22 inch barrels and if you go with like browning's x-bolt speed sr you can get it in a 22-inch barrel fierce their rifles can come in a 22-inch barrel for 300 win mag sako uh also has that availability gun works you of course can do it you can customize just about everything there so a lot of the rifles you can get in a 22 inch barrel is probably only going to cut about a hundred feet per second off your velocity and make the gun a lot less unwieldy in the woods all right let's talk ballistics we're going to compare a 30 odd 6 to a 300 win mag because i think for a lot of people those are the two cartridges you're choosing between do i really need more than the 30 odd 6 and so if you're willing to take a little bit more recoil here's what you might get the 300 win mag is shooting about 250 feet per second faster and because of that you know wind drift is going to be less power is going to be more and drop is going to be less and so it's really just a trade-off do you want to take the more recoil in order to get those ballistic advantages but how much recoil are we really talking about it's a lot it's a lot more recoil to get those 200 250 feet per second faster than the 30 out six in fact it's about nine to 10 foot pounds of energy more in the 300 wind mag than the 30 out six you know you're right around 30 foot pounds of energy in a 300 win mag with a standard rifle configuration and that's too much for most people to shoot well there's no way i'm going to shoot a 300 win mag as well as i'm going to shoot a 6'5 creedmoor i just won't and if i find myself shooting too much of a heavy cartridge like a 300 win mag i can start to develop a little bit of a flinch now i've untrained it pretty well as i shoot a lot of guns but if i do it a whole lot i'll notice ah dang it's starting to get in my head a little bit it just takes a little bit more work it's more of an advanced cartridge to shoot if that's a reasonable way of saying it i wouldn't recommend it for a newer shooter you're just going to learn some bad habits the next category this is the kills anything on the north american continent category this drives me nuts i have heard people use this phrase talking about so many different cartridges and i'm like really the 6'5 creedmoor you think kills anything on the north i mean could it kill anything sure but would you really hunt a 1 500 pound kodiak brown bear with 6'5 creedmoor or a 65prc or a 308 that would not be my choice i'd love to see video of you doing it but i wouldn't want to be standing next to you when you did we're going to get a little bit nerdy now we're going to look at some of the case design drawbacks these are the reasons that people are coming out with new 30 causes because they're recognizing some of the things on the design of the 300 win mag that just aren't ideal for today's standards by far the biggest knock on the 300 win mag is that neck as you can see it's a very short neck you know you can see the shoulder here and then that little bit of silver there before we start into the bullet that's the neck and if we have a longer neck it can grab on to that bullet a little bit better and keep it from getting off axis as the bullet is firing out of the cartridge and getting into the to the lands of the rifling now if you look at other 30 cows just as a comparison like you can see they have much longer necks this is the 300 win mag you can see has a much shorter neck than other 30 cal offerings and that really is a legitimate uh drawback especially if you're a hand loader and you want to change seating depths quite a bit yeah the 300 win mag does have that problem and the bullet does get into that powder column but again i still think it's it's a lot of powder to be working with the next thing you'll notice is this little ridge right here right at the back there that is the belt it's just that little ring before we drop back there that ring is called a belt and really the purpose of a belted belt is nothing for today's standards the idea of the belt back in the old days was two one it's supposed to like wow we're gonna need this extra bit of metal here to really clamp things in for a magnum and that's just marketing that's that's not necessary at all as you can see from even larger magnums that don't have a belt the other thing it does is its offer is it was done for head spacing so that we can end right here and make sure that the bullet doesn't go too far into the barrel we can head space off the belt even though really there's no reason we don't set that head space off the shoulder in fact most guns are anyway now even in a 300 win mag the shoulder angle is plenty to be able to head space here to make sure it doesn't go further and so that belt just really has no purpose and that bothers a lot of people but as i've heard every imaginable argument against belts it's tough to really identify anything it's doing to limit you some reloaders say there can be a little bit of an issue with some bulging there i don't know um it is going to reduce this the the width of that case a little bit that we can get that's valid by a millimeter it just doesn't really mean much but hey it's there and if you hate belted magnums don't pick the 300 win mag next category is versatility the 300 win mag is super versatile because you can get it loaded from 150 grains all the way up to over 210 grains and the ballistics are going to change dramatically based on the bullet weights you choose seems to me that the most popular is 180 grains for a 300 win mag maybe 190 and so that's usually its comfort spot but you can really load up and get very heavy if you want if you're shooting something that you want really really dead now that you have all that knowledge about the 300 win mag be sure to apply it in hunting clash and we thank them for sponsoring this video

Channel: Backfire

Views: 334,188

Keywords: Backfire, Hunting, Outdoors

Id: yAMnetUmrn8

Length: 12min 57sec (777 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 16 2022