7mm Remington Magnum - History and Performance

now let's take a break while i chase covey out of the room because she's distracting me i'll be right back come get out of here shame on you you're not supposed to be upstairs you're going to trip on that wire yeah there go the lights bad dog [Music] oh yes a beautiful fall day out there and here i am in the studio am i crazy well i'm here to fulfill a promise not too long ago i did a review on one gun to rule them all and it's on the borden timberline this rifle chambered for seven millimeter remington magnum and i promised to detail that seven millimeter magnum in another video and that's what i'm doing now so why would i choose the seven millimeter remington magnum cartridge as a do-it-all cartridge well because i think it falls right in the middle of what well-balanced cartridge that can pretty much handle everything one of the things you look for in an all-around cartridge is its ability to shoot smaller lighter bullets for smaller and lighter game and faster trajectory flatter trajectories and a little faster velocity but also able to handle the heavier bullets to take on the bigger things like elk and moose and uh hudu in england in africa and i think the seven millimeter magnum does that very well now a lot of people will say why not the 300 win mag can't argue that one it's a great choice so is the 30 odd six and there are a lot more out there once again we come down to the balance you have have to consider everything including availability of ammo expensive ammo options in bullets options in factory ammunition versus bullets for hand loading all those considerations and then what sort of recoil are you going to endure and how big and long does your rifle have to be to get full velocity and full potential out of that cartridge yes a lot of things to consider but having done that over the last several decades of hunting and testing various rifles and cartridges i keep coming back to that old seven rem mag even though it's been around for a long time i think that thing's about what 60 years old now remington came out with that in 1962 so it's getting a little long in the tooth but that doesn't mean it still can't do the job so let's look at that seven rem mag and consider a little bit of history before we go anywhere else back in the 20th century roughly in the 40s roy weatherby started making magnum cartridges out of a belted magnum case the 375 h he necked it down he straightened it out a little bit on the side walls he played around with various links and he came out with a 300 the 270 the 7 millimeter or 338 he called it a 340. just pretty much any caliber you could think of rory was pushing the envelope with bigger cartridges more velocity and that was all the rage the 20th century was a time of rocket development going to space everybody wanted speed and by golly whether he was giving it to him but whether these rifles were always proprietary and so was his cartridge you had to have a wetherby rifle to shoot the wetherbees unless you got a custom builder make you something the average person was still stuck with winchesters and remingtons well i wouldn't say stuck with because they made some pretty darn good rifles back in those days and everybody was hoping to get a little more velocity out of them so winchester oddly enough came out with a belted magnum but it wasn't a fast one it was the 458 winchester magnum they took that 370 h case and they shortened the length of it opened it up to take a 45 caliber bullet and it would fit in their standard length model 70 rifle became a big hit with people going to africa where you really needed that big cartridge then they did a 338 winchester magnum it's another big one but really great for elk but deer hunting was the big thing back in those days the deer hunters were still looking for a cartridge winchester comes out with the 264 winchester magnum holy mackerel that thing was screaming fast they called it the westerner had a 26 inch barrel on it and it was absolutely a scorcher so people began really gravitating to that 264 and i think that woke up remington that 264 came out in 1959 and in 1962 remington countered with the seven millimeter remington magnum and really blew the 264 out of the water now the 264 was having some issues with barrel burning back in those days they all talked about oh it's just too much powder volume for that tiny little bore and you're going to burn out your barrel you won't get enough barrel life so they lost interest in that but i think the bigger impact from that seven rem mag coming out was this ability to shoot heavier bullets with that 260 you could with that 264 you could get a about us yeah they had 160 grain bullet but i think it was a round nose and it wasn't really efficient for long range shooting remington comes out with this 7 loading 175 grain spire point bullet it's a lot more efficient for long range shooting and it's got that weight that you want for elk elk moose and the big bears yeah people just dropped that 264 went with this one winchester didn't have the 300 out yet the next year they came out with it because of the competition they were getting from that seven and then those two battled it out for the rest of the century really but that was why we went with that magnum craze you know back in those days we didn't have laser range finders so if you don't know the exact distance to your target and you're guesstimating it's at 300 yards or 350 or 400 and if you didn't guess pretty closely your bullet could easily drop beneath it so if you could start the bullet faster it had a flatter trajectory and it would reach your target without missing by dropping too much it had maximum point blank range of 300 350 sometimes even 400 yards you just had to give it that velocity that's one of the things that seven rim mag did but why not just go with the 300 after all you can shoot even heavier bullets than that well that comes at a price heavier bullets high velocity you're looking at more recoil and there's a lot of people who love magnums and whole idea of that velocity and that energy but they don't like to recoil so maximum point blank range you would be really surprised at what you can do with this seven rem mag and some of today's higher ballistics coefficient bullets for reaching long range and getting a really flat trajectory and i've got some charts printed up some trajectory charts that we're going to compare here in a bit so stay tuned and we're going to look at those numbers we're going to compare the 270 winchester which is known as a flat shooting cartridge without much recoil the seven rim mag which is a little faster maybe a little flatter and the 300 winchester magnum which is pretty hard to beat but you might be surprised at what those numbers show us in fact sometimes that seven rem can actually outperform the 300 winchester magnum believe it or not we'll get to that in a bit but let's discuss some of the physical parameters of this cartridge if you know much about rifles in cartridge you know there's a short action which is really popular these days and that starts with the 308 winchester about a two inch case and you put a bullet on top and you're getting uh staying under about three inches on your overall length and that fits into a shorter action rifle lighter weight a little handier people love it six five creedmoor big part of the reason it's so popular is the short action now this is a 260 remington which is the 308 case neck down to 26. it's about 100 feet per second faster than that 6.5 creedmoor short action great little cartridge but you're never going to have enough powder capacity in those short actions to reach the potential of the standard length action represented by the 30x6 and that became the 270 the 25.6 the 280 a lot of different cartridges based on that and that is about a two and a half inch case and overall length on those are held to about 3.34 inches this is where remington and winchester really played it smart what wetherbee was doing with his cartridges was using the full length magnum and that required that big long action and not everybody could afford those rifles there weren't that many around anyhow the model 70 and model 700 rifles were built on the standard length action so all you had to do to put a magnum in there was shorten that 375 case and that's what happened with the 300 win mag and this seven rem mag so as you can see sitting right here beside the 30 out six standard length action makes an inexpensive rifle that everybody can afford and that's why this seven ram mag sold so well it had better ballistics than the 270 and the 30 out six and it had more oomph than the 270 because it's a 28 caliber bullet instead of a 27 so good reason to have that seven now these days we've got much bigger cartridges in 28 caliber here's one of them this is the seven millimeter remington ultra magnum this represents the full length magnum and as you can see you're going to have to have a lot longer bolt throw a lot heavier rifle to fit that in works just fine but there's a lot of horsepower involved in that and that means a heavier rifle and or a lot more recoil so set the big magnums aside stick with the efficiency of a standard action not as efficient as the short action but still we're balancing here this is going to do the job with those heavier bullets where these short ones won't now you can get this short action chambered in seven it's called the seven millimeter o8 remington which is a great all-around cartridge but it doesn't reach the velocities of this guy so there's where i think i've struck the balance not too long and heavy and powerful with too much recoil not too short et cetera et cetera right in the wheelhouse now i keep talking about the 300 winchester magnum so let's pull one in and do a direct comparison you can see that the case is larger than the seven so you're getting more powder inside of that but you're driving a heavier bullet and this is what we really need to start concentrating on as riflemen as hunters is understanding the differences in these bullet diameters and ballistics coefficients and here's why i think the 7 is more efficient the 28 caliber bullet is obviously skinnier than the 30 and that gives it a higher ballistics coefficient if you use the same weight bullet and give it the same basic form and shape the same sleek nose and a in a boat tail if it's got one if those all match up the seven is going to have a higher bc and that bullet is going to retain more of its energy and velocity across all the ranges that enables it to exceed the uh bigger bullet in energy far down range seems kind of crazy but you start off with the 180 and the 30 and 175 in this seven and eventually that 175 is going to be hanging on to more energy but it happens out there pretty far and we'll look at those ballistic charts and find out exactly what but does it really matter i mean how much energy do you need there's a standard figure that's thrown around for a deer you should have at least a thousand foot pounds of energy to make a nice clean kill and for elk it should be 1500 pounds well i i don't think those numbers are absolute you know that's kind of a nice benchmark but i don't think a bullet having 500 foot pounds of energy is going to bounce off of a deer and i don't think one having 2 000 foot pounds of energy is gonna slamming out to the ground never fails because i've seen it it just doesn't work that way but still it's a nice benchmark to consider and we will look at those on our ballistic charts here in a bit but you should know that both of these are fitting into that short action as i mean into that standard length action as you can see with that 30 out six they all fit in there you've got a bigger cartridge with more powder capacity because the diameter is larger now some people complain about oh it's got a belt on it that's bad i just don't buy that the reason you have a belt on these cartridges is for head spacing back in the mid 20th century we all thought that that belt was required to hold all the energy in that it was such a powerful magnum that you needed that extra belt on there just to hold everything together now it has nothing to do with that the chamber is what holds it all together the belt on here is for head spacing what's head spacing well when the cartridge enters the chamber it has to stop so if it doesn't have a sharp shoulder on it to slam up against the wall inside that chamber to hold it right there it would go forward too far the firing pin would hit it and push it and you wouldn't get solid ignition so you've got to stop it somewhere in the old days you had a rimmed cartridge like the 30 30 and the rim actually sticks out past the side and that would hit the back of the breach and hold it in there that was the head spacing device well when they came out with the 375 and especially the 300 h magnum they were fairly sloped didn't have a lot of shoulder on them and they just wondered if they were going to have good efficient head spacing and just in case they weren't they put what amounts to a rimmed case on here that's the belt so when you've got a belted chamber at the back of a rifle they've got that little lip inside of it and this fits against that breech lip and that's what holds that cartridge in the perfect position for a good firing pin strike head spacing so nowadays people say well if you got that belt on there it's it's a little harder to get everything lined up just right you don't get the accuracy out of it and it doesn't feed as well and i have never found that to be a problem these belted rounds have been around since 1901 11 or yeah i think that's when the 375 h h came out and roy weatherby's belted magnums they've been feeding well in all sorts of situations for decades and decades i don't buy the feeding issue i've never had a problem with it and i don't buy the accuracy issue at all because i have worked with and fired and hand loaded for several seven rem mags and 300 win mags that would shoot a half inch or better and that's incredible accuracy and hunting rifle so i discount all that stuff and don't worry about the belt now there are other complaints about the seven rem mag but you know if you're a nit picker you might want to agree with them but if i can get a case like this that feeds reliably shoots accurately under moa and has a trajectory and the ability to shoot anywhere from a 100 grain bullet to 195 grain bullet i can pretty much hunt anything in the world and that's why i think the remington 7 millimeter magnum is one of the best all-round hunting cartridges for a one rifle battery for hunting just about anything in the world now let's pull up those trajectory tables and look at some numbers so you get a good comparison on what the drops are going to be the wind deflection is going to be and the retained energy downrange because those are really eye openers okay let's get to those trajectory tables we've been talking about as you can see on this whole chart we've got numbers and what's happening is we've got our cartridges and the bullet and the ballistics coefficient of each bullet the muzzle velocity the drop drift in energy at 300 400 500 and 600 yards so let's just run through those numbers really quick with the 270 pretty flat shooting cartridge you get a bullet bc with a really good quality bc bullet at 0.485 130 grain bullet you can usually drive that thing 3 000 to 3 100 feet per second so we're going to go kind of with the top end out of a 24 inch barrel here and there's the result it's if you are zeroing these so that they strike no more than two and a half inches high at 100 yards this is what you end up with so we have two inch drop 5.6 inches deflection in a 10 mile an hour right angle wind and you retain 1841 foot pounds of energy at 300 yards compare that to the seven remag 140 grain bullet look at that bc is exactly the same but we've got more muzzle velocity that results in only about a half inch of drop five inches of deflection in the wind because those ballis coefficients are about the same and more energy 2266 foot-pounds of energy so you can take that across the boards and just check everything out i don't very often shoot at any game to 500 yards rarely there but if you want to take it all the way up to 600 here's your differences 52 inches of drop 43 inches of drop 42 inches of drop on that 300 winchester magnum with 150 grain bullet now i'm trying to keep my bullets roughly in that weight range that most people use for deer hunting you can obviously go to heavier ones and we'll get that in a bit but look at the the deflections and the drifts you know that's uh 25 inches of deflection in the wind for the 300 win mag versus 23 not a huge difference especially at 600 yards and 25 so really there's not a lot of deflection difference for and energy is the main difference in these but you know if you're thinking that you need more than a thousand foot pounds of energy then you want to step up to the seven or the three hundred but i wouldn't hesitate to put that much energy on even an elk and i'm sure i would terminate him with the right bullet energy isn't all this cracked up to be but boy you sure have to hit the target and these flat shooting rifles with the high bc bullets that minimize wind deflection make it a lot easier to hit at any distance so let's go to heavier bullets now think elk eland all the bigger animals here we can step up to 150 and that's about all you can get these days in the 270 winchester especially with factory ammunition they used to load 160s but you rarely see those anymore i think it's going to start coming up with more bullets with high bc's and more weight because of the fast twist era that we're in but that's not going to work for your older 270s with the one and ten twist you're gonna have to go to one and nine or one and eight and a half to shoot the new high bc bullets that are coming out so we're going to stick with the good ol factory stuff and here you can see our bcs are getting a little higher as we step up but this is one i might get a little grief from some from some folks on 175 grain bullet in the seven millimeter is about top end yeah you can go up to 180s and even 195 now but that's generally as heavy as anybody's going to go the 300 wind mag has always been really popular with that 180 grain bullet even though you can go up to 230 and even 250 these days but let's just go with what most traditional elk and deer hunters would use in a heavier bullet in that 300 so the sacrifice we're making is with the ballistics coefficient quite a bit less than the seven red mag and now you're going to see that in our numbers as we get downrange drop is 14 12 8 inches of wind deflection versus 10 so you're always going to see the wind deflection advantage to those higher bc bullets eight here it's 13 at 500 yards 17 with that 300 even though it's starting at a higher muzzle velocity 200 feet per second faster to start off with but man when you don't have that high ballistics coefficient you just can't do as well on the wind deflection look at when you get out to 600 yards it really opens up six inches of difference and then again there are your energies and you know it's just really impressive how much energy all these have well out there even at 270 at 500 yards you still have over 1500 foot-pounds of energy so i wouldn't be too concerned i would notice and point out though that that seven remag 170 thing five grain bullet even though it starts out a little bit slower and it's a little bit lighter look what happens way out there it's actually carrying about a hundred foot pounds more energy than the three hundred so changes a few uh a few minds about some of these ideas on how much better the 300 winchester magnum is than the 7 or even how much it shoots faster than the 70 because so many guys will say oh the 7 rem mag is just too fast the bullets don't have time to expand i prefer 300 well it's going faster than the seven or mag every time so things to consider now i threw one number in here on hold chart for a much heavier bullet for anybody who complains that i'm shooting an inefficient bullet in the 300 versus that seven so 6.648 on the bc we've pushed it all the way up to 0.673 by going to a 212 grain bullet so you're going to be going a lot slower but look at your numbers especially way out here yeah you're dropping more but you're carrying more energy and look at your wind deflection you're matching up to that seven rim mag and that was sort of my point earlier in this production uh the seven rem mag is efficient so you've got to endure a lot more recoil if you're going to keep up with it by going to a 300 win mag so let's go to our next chart when we look at those recoil levels okay here we are with our recoil levels now we're going to assume that we're shooting all of these cartridges in an eight pound rifle the heavier your rifle the less the recoil but the higher your velocity and the heavier your bullet and the more powder used to drive that bullet the more recoil you're going to get so a 270 pushing at that 130 grain bullet 3100 feet per second gives you 19.6 foot-pounds of recoil energy at the butt but the velocity of that recoil is 12.6 feet per second so some folks say this rifle recoils sharply i think that's what they're referring to the velocity of it coming back more than just the energy itself all of it contributes though so the seven rep mag with that 140 grain bullet it's going faster it has more powder so you're going to get a little bit more recoil energy and velocity but for all the guys who say the seven red bang is a sharp kicker that 300 mag magnum isn't look at the 300 wind mag with 150 grain bullet it has more feet per second velocity than that seven rem mag and oh this number is wrong that's supposed to ban 30 31.7 foot-pounds of energy sorry about that typo i'll do that from time to time now we're going to step up in bullet weight and you'll see how we step up also in the recoil so the 270 with 150 grain bullet goes from a 19.6 to 21.7 for foot pounds 12.6 to 13.2 not a lot but it adds up seven are in mag you're stepping up you're going 25 to 27 14 to 14.7 so not a huge difference there but there's some 300 win mag 180 grain bullet 3100 feet per second boy this is where it starts to add up 33.8 foot-pounds of energy that's a lot more than that light load in the 270 isn't it and then there's the velocity 16.5 so how you figure those things out in the real world what does it actually feel like there's no way to describe that you just have to get behind a gun and figure it out you know and it's not just the weight of the rifle but it's the shape of the stock because if you've got a good straight comb or even a comb that rises to the back when the when the rifle comes back the coleman yeah well it tends to slip under your cheek rather than slapping up against it it slides back and down and away from you so it really can make a difference in this shape of your stock so if you're having problems with some bite give that a consideration well that then is uh my wrap up on the seven millimeter remington magnum and my defense of it as an all-round cartridge suitable for hunting just about anything and everything you are certainly welcome to disagree and i would invite you to write in and defend the cartridge of your choice as a great all-around and give us some good statistics don't you say i've been shooting it all my life and it always works yeah we all know that but let's have some evidence please because i think it helps a lot of us decide what we want to endure with recoil and carry weight on rifles what we find to be convenient and just plain interesting we just need to know how all this stuff works what are the physics involved and with that uh i do want to add this how fortunate we are to live in the united states of america where we still have some basic freedoms especially our second amendment freedoms to have all these incredibly wonderful diverse and effective hunting tools cartridges rifles bullets and the inventiveness of us americans what we can come up with we like to complain about who needs another cartridge who needs another bullet but really this is what entrepreneurial ship is all about and that good old yankee ingenuity the fact that we have the incentive and the curiosity and the ability to develop new loads take an old cartridge and make it better take a rifle and make it better come up with new bullets new twist rates i think all of that stuff is fascinating and just another example of how we can exercise our freedom so this is ron spomer signing off and reminding everyone let's all hunt honest and shoot straight [Music] you

Channel: Ron Spomer Outdoors

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Keywords: outdoors, ron spomer outdoors, ron spomer, hunting, firearms, guns, shooting sports, rifles, big game hunting, hunting gear, hunting gear review, rifle review, gun review, 7mm remington magnum, 7mm remington magnum review, 7mm remington magnum long range, 7mm rem mag, 7mm-08, 7mm rem mag vs 300 win mag, best hunting caliber, best hunting cartridge, all-round rifle, all-round caliber, hunting cartridges, hunting calibers, 28 caliber, ballistics, trajectory

Id: yeHN10nybJc

Length: 27min 0sec (1620 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 24 2020