Best 7mm Cartridges: 28, 280, 284

hey when i do videos comparing cartridges i will inevitably get a response from someone saying the seven millimeter is the best it shoots the furthest it shoots the flattest it's deadly well maybe but which one are we talking about [Music] one of our patreon members suggested covering the seven millimeter and i said which one because there are so many and this isn't even all of them so i want to thank this patreon for suggesting the seven millimeter because it is a rich field and we're about to mine it the seven millimeter cartridges really cover the waterfront let's take a closer look so the seven millimeter is a little bit confusing to shooters because we have 28s and 284s and 280s and they're all the same thing obviously one's a metric and one's imperial on your measurements so what it is is the bore size is 0.28 inches in diameter that's land to land well when they cut rifling grooves in it it gets deeper and then it becomes a 284 so all the seven millimeters or the twenty eights or the two eighties or the two eighty fours whatever they're called they're all going to shoot bullets that are point two eight four in diameter that's what you're shooting twenty eights but the seven millimeter sounds a lot cooler than today so a lot of seven millimeters all the same thing but here's the crazy thing none of them are actually seven millimeters i mean if you do the translating from the seven millimeter into the imperial system seven millimeter comes out to measure at .27559 nobody calls anything that and the bullet diameter 284 actually comes out to be 7.21 millimeters and i've always thought if they can call the 308 winchester a 7.62 which is accurate why don't they call the 7s a 7.21 i don't know but they don't do it but don't worry about it just remember that all the 7 millimeters all the 28s the 284s that's all the same thing a 28 caliber bore and they're shooting those .284 diameter bullets now as you can see we have a lot of them here and the first one that everyone started with was a 757 mauser 1892 is when peter mouser put this thing out and it is a world beater this was used by caramojo bell in africa in the turn of the 19th century for elephant hunting he was an ivory hunter and he took something like 800 elephants with that little cartridge i mean that's crazy it's it's way down here at the start of this line because i've roughly set these up by their power levels so you can see this guy is not exactly up here at the top it's pretty weak probably shooting at 150 grain bullet about 2 800 feet per second at the most maybe 27 and he was shooting him a lot slower but it just goes to show you the potential a good shot with a good bullet you don't need a monstrous elephant gun to take elephants but he was a heck of a shot and he took brain shots with solid bullets but we are hunting deer and elk and moose and all of these sevens could probably qualify and have over the years but let's just start down here at the bottom of the heap with this little stubby guy this is a seven millimeter remington br bench rest and it was designed as a short little cartridge for some special bench competitions and they were using those in handguns a lot back in i think the 1990s didn't really go anywhere they necked up a seven millimeter br to make it uh and it's really not even marketed anymore so then we start with this guy which is also fading fast if it's even out there that's the 730 watters this gentleman named waters thought he could improve the 30 30 by making it a 7 millimeter gets the bc of the bullet a little bit higher and he made it a 7 millimeter so it's essentially the 30 30 neck down to 7 millimeters not very many people shoot that and that's pretty much always put in a lever action i don't know if anyone even chambers for it anymore so then we've got our mouser still a great cartridge the only minus on this thing is that they've got it at a fairly low pressure level because it was so old rifles back in those days couldn't take the kinds of pressures they do now so your factory loads are going to be loaded down quite a bit and that's why the seven millimeter o8 remington which as you can see is a shorter cartridge has less powder capacity but it will match the ballistics or exceed them because it shoots at a higher pressure rate so both of those are great white tail cartridges and they can be used successfully for elk and moose and a lot of african game i've shot it a fair amount in africa and so has my wife on one trip over there she was shooting this and she took kudu and gems buck one shot each big bulls and she dropped them with one shot each with a little seven millimeter o8 and those of course were chest shots not brain shots so don't think that that can't handle an elk or a moose but for white tails man it's got mild recoil and of course you can shoot a lot of different bullets in there shoot a lighter bullet to reduce your recoil for young folks small framed shooters great but if you want to increase the punch just get a bigger bullet on it so then we jump up to that 284 winchester i really like that cartridge it is i think kind of a forgotten cartridge but mel forbes put it in his initial ultralight rifle ultra light arms this thing weighs just under five pounds before the scope's on it and he tailored it for that 284 as a sheep rifle and it has worked extremely well for that and i've used this thing for for sheep and elk and deer and just all sorts of things with that 284 but you don't see a lot of the 284 anymore not many people load for it if you're a hand loader great round to work with but if not you'll do better with some of these others you can come awfully close to the same performance with that 7 millimeter 08 probably within 50 or 100 feet per second then we jump up to a 7 by 6 four you could call this guy the european version of the 280 remington but the 280 remington is actually a version of that because this one was out before the 280 remington remington is pretty late to the party with this one and that is the 30.6 neck down to 28 they lengthened a little bit so you couldn't squeeze them into the 30.6 chamber but basically that's you know 270 280 30 at six right in there same bunch then we've got the new one that everybody likes and i think this is what our patreon member was referring to when he asked me to cover the sevens i think he said something about the actually improved the ai that was kind of a wildcat for a long time as you can see you've got your 280 if you push that forward the shoulder forward a little bit and sharpen it to 40 degrees and got real straight side walls that is an actually improved cartridge and people just kept custom building rifles for that and hand loading it until finally someone decided that they were going to make it an official sami spec cartridge so now you can buy ammunition i know nosler builds some i think you get a box right there yeah nozzle is loading it there are several others you've seen more and more rifles chambered for it kimber's got some out shoot really well so that's about optimal in that 30 odd six diameter cartridge size right there then we drop down to our short fats and this started about the year 2000 this was remington's short action ultra magnum great little cartridge didn't do real well in its original configuration but boy the wildcatters like to neck that thing down and even up and create all sorts of things but as a seven millimeter it's hanging right in there with that ai in a shorter package if you like a short fat cartridge then if you want a little more velocity you step up to winchester's version which is just a little bit longer these will both fit short actions but that was probably going to add another 50 to maybe 100 feet per second more velocity and then we've got the ultimate i think the well-known remington magnum seven millimeter remington magnum and i think this is the cartridge that most commenters are referencing when they say the seven millimeter is the flattest shooting hardest hitting longest range wonderful cartridge in the world and some of them will say it's got great bcs now there's a little confusion going on with that statement because of course ballistic coefficient bc refers to the bullet not the cartridge and i think some people get that confused and they think well they've heard that the seven millimeter remington has high bc's meaning it can shoot some pretty long bullets it'll stabilize them the rifling twist in the sevens there's usually a one in ten or one in nine and that will stabilize some pretty long bullets and usually those are going to be weighing 175 grains and now even up to some 180s and i think we're even getting some 190s but you've got to increase your twist rate for that kind of stuff but this seven is the one that really other than that mouser put the sevens on the map starting in about 1962 when it came out and it has proven itself around the world for just about everything now some people will complain that it's got a belt on the cartridge whale i have never found belts to be a problem but some people just don't like them they think they don't feed well i've never had any feeding issues with it i think it's still one of the finest all-around cartridges in the world so don't snub the seven millimeter remington magnum and uh this guy most of us haven't heard about it popped up about i don't know six eight years ago it's called the seven millimeter long range magnum and it was created by the guys at gun works they were looking sort of the ultimate short action cartridge but they decided they'd go with the 30 at sixth length action push your shoulder back a little bit so they could put those really long high bc bullets on it because the gun works guys are all about long range precision and really reaching out there so they want to be handling those 175 180 grain bullets or even longer and that's what they specifically built that for but it seems to have faded away i don't hear much about it anymore but it's a great cartridge now we've got one that looks real similar to the seven millimeter remington magnum and it's actually a precursor to it this one came out first and that's wetherby's belted magnum version of the seven seven weatherby magnum now let's just move this long range magnum out of the picture for a bit put these two side by side and you can see how closely those two look i mean gee you've got the double venturi shoulder on this wetherby and that was kind of a gimmick uh he started doing that instead of a sharp edged shoulder it rounds off and then rounds off again when it comes into the neck it doesn't really contribute much of anything other than a look but it's still a great cartridge and those two will be within 50 feet per second of one another i think it's pretty much tied to the runner on that one then we've got another maximized belted cartridge same essential cartridge as these two but instead of shortening it down to that 30 out of six length they left it up at that full 375 300 h magnum length cartridge you don't see a lot of those because the shorter ones that fit the shorter actions that not really a short action but the long action is the 30 at six length action the magnum action is even longer and that's what this one would fit this is the stw shooting times westerner and that adds a lot of horsepower as you can see because it's got more powder volume in it and then we go to kind of the king of the hill fairly recent cartridges and it's getting to be about 20 years old now but that is remington's ultra magnum seven millimeter ultra magnum and they're not kidding you look at the size of that thing it's based off the 404 jeffrey case great big fat thing and it's got no belt on it so a lot of people like that if you don't mind a really long cartridge works great and it cranks out i'll bet with 150 grain bullet you're probably pushing 30 350 feet per second you might even hit 3 400 feet per second depending on your barrel length and then finally we've got the 28 nozzler and it's quite similar to this rum they've got that same 404 jeffree's fat cartridge right there but they've got that shoulder sitting back till you've got your 30 odd six length cartridge so it's going to fit a few more actions that this one probably wouldn't and this could be a little more compact now they are claiming 3 400 feet per second with 150 grain bullet on that one you should be able to get it but i think it'll take a 20 28 inch barrel 26 might make it but that's kind of a current family if you take this guy out for really not being loaded anymore you could find rifles chambered for most of these which one are you going to pick i don't think you can go wrong with any of them obviously the smaller ones are not going to recoil as much and they're not going to eat out your bores from throat erosion from all that powder burning so if you're looking for an all-around rifle mostly for white tail hunting occasionally elk and the ability to take bigger stuff consider some of those smaller ones i would say the easiest one to find ammunition for and rifles chambered for is that seven millimeter o8 remington it's based off the 308 and it actually shoots flatter and farther and drifts less than the 308 pushing the same weight bullets uh the 284 is a specialty cartridge i love it hand loaders love it but you've got to do a little extra work with that one and then the 7x64 well it's great in europe but you're not going to find very many cartridges over here loaded with different bullets for that one sort of limit your options the 280 remington really should be more popular than it is but because it's not for whatever reason you don't find a lot of variety in factory ammunition on that one either and now the 280ai you would think would really be an oddball but because it's become popular right now that might be my recommendation for a standard length action 30.6 action size and in a seven millimeter if you want your maximum velocities without a lot of extra powder and recoil kind of right in the middle of the pack that one will be hard to beat but if you want to equal it with a short action either one of these will do the wsm or the psalm those are great fat short cartridges if that's your favorite if you like those short fats those are the two to look at still can't beat that 7mm as i said before the remington magnum is kind of the standard and i don't have any problem with it but with today's long bullets it's really better than it ever was and the new powders helped quite a bit but remember anytime someone says wow with today's new powders and bullets this one or that one's better than the other ones no they can all use the same powders in the same bullets so it really just evens out but it does make any one of them potentially better than they've ever ever been in history once you're up into that seven rem mag range though you're starting to talk over bore so you're concerned a little bit about burning the throat out in a hunting rifle i sure wouldn't worry about it i would say you're looking at least 1500 rounds through that barrel before you start to see any fall off in accuracy and even then that fall off might not matter in a big game rifle maybe for target shooting but not that but you get up into these big burners the stw the rum and the 28 nozzler you've got some serious throat burning issues going on there but as i always say you want to play the game you got to pay the piper and if you want to go that fast 3 400 feet per second or so with a 7 millimeter you're gonna have to burn some powder now the other thing to consider are longer bullets i've been talking velocities with 150 grain bullet on these just because it's kind of in the middle of the pack and some of these smaller ones won't handle much more than that very effectively um so with the bigger ones you're going to want to take advantage of all that powder by putting a bigger bullet on there what do you get out of that well you get a higher bc bullet potentially and that means less wind deflection and we will look at some charts of course we always do this is one i'm going to flash up for you several times in this video just to give you an idea of the relative velocities of all these cartridges we're talking about and then we're going to look at some ballistic tables here in a little bit but before we go there even though we're looking at a lot of different cartridges here here are some more that aren't even on this pile so you've got proprietary cartridges you've got cartridges that are now obsolete these are all seven millimeters and on the back side you've got the european and the british ones i've got one european cartridge in here that's seven by sixty four but here are a few more some of them are still out there still extant others are obsolete but the seven has obviously been a popular diameter in bullets for a long long time so to the tail of the tape i've got some charts here ballistic calculations are all done and what we're going to do is compare the seven millimeter 08 as a low end with the seven rem magnum which is kind of in the middle and then the top end will give it to the 28 nosler and you can follow along on the screen as we read some of these numbers now i have zeroed each of these for their maximum point blank range because that's how you really get your value out of them for your downrange trajectories if you just zero at 200 or 250 out to most hunting distances three four hundred yards there's not going to be an inch or two difference in the trajectories or even the wind deflections on most of these so to really reach out and get their potential i want to zero them for an eight inch diameter target that's roughly stuck to the to the side of a deer you're going to hit all the vitals you've got a little fudge factor even so as long as you can keep your bullet inside of that 8 inch circle you aim for the center and you can shoot high at 100 yards 150 yards 170 yards and then start dropping back down as long as you don't go any more than four inches above your line of aim or your line of sight you're not going to miss that eight inch target and then as the bullet progresses downrange and it starts dropping more and more when it reaches the bottom of that circle you've reached your maximum point blank range so zeroing is going to be different for every one of these bullets the seven millimeter await remington is zeroed for 265 yards and that gives it its maximum point blank range of 311 yards pretty good long reach for a dead on hold on an 8 inch target you're going to hit it now with the seven ram mag you can zero a little farther and then reach a little farther zero that one at 299 yards and you can reach 352 before it drops out of that 80 inch circle pretty nice now what about that 28 nosler that one's going to zero at 312 and reach 366. a little better than a seven rem mag but nothing incredible but there's the differences for your drop trajectories but let's look at the rest of the benefits we get from these bullets at these different velocities now remember these are the same bullet every time 150 grain i think i used a barnes ttsx 150 grain that would be about a 0.42 ballistics coefficient so that's consistent and that will keep the wind deflections fairly similar but the velocity is going to make a difference so run down the uh ranges and of course you see at 300 yards you're dropping almost three inches with the seven millimeter 08 whereas the um seven rim mag barely drops at all because it's been zeroed at 299 and that 28 nozzler it's still a little more than a half inch high at 300 yards but notice that 100 yards none of them are more than about three inches high just a little bit more and there's no peak trajectory above four inches on any of them that's keeping that in that eight inch diameter target zone nice but reaching out to the distances where you really start to see the advantage to these faster cartridges 400 yards got 16 inches of drop in the 708 versus 9 inches in the rim mag and um what do we got only seven seven and a quarter inches in that 28 nozzles so you're beginning to see there's not a lot of difference between these two top enders but the little 708 at the bottom yeah there starts to be a pretty significant difference but you're probably not going to use that one for extreme range shooting anyway so go on down those distances and look at the windage the energy and then you start to see some differences especially in the energy the seven rem mag is carrying out to 700 yards a thousand foot pounds of energy whereas the little 708 is down to 785. so if you want to keep your energy or your impact energies at a thousand foot pounds you probably need to stop at four or five hundred yards you don't want to reach out too far with those smaller seven millimeters but the bigger ones can do it look at that 28 it's carrying out all the way to 800 yards and you've got a little over 1 000 foot-pounds i'm not saying that you need more than a thousand foot bounds to terminate a deer or even an elk but a lot of people use this as a benchmark a thousand for a deer-sized animal and 1500 foot-pounds for an elk sized animal but of course plenty of elk of have died when they were hit with bullets with a lot less energy than that but something you use for a benchmark of course at extreme range thousand yards huge differences 346 inches of drop for the 708 and only 246 for the seven rim mag and only 219 for that 28 nosler and the wind deflections you know they're not too bad but still if you're going from say an 85 or 86 inches of windage with the 28 nozzler and you go down to that seven millimeter eight now you have a hundred and eleven inches that's a pretty significant difference there that's easily missing or wounding an animal but i don't recommend anybody shoot at a thousand yards for an animal anyway you know 500 is probably maximum even though back in jack o'connor's day they were shooting animals at 500 yards with their 270s and such but these days with laser rangefinders we can really nail down that distance and become precise you get a scope that's got the usual corrections on it and you can drop them right in there except for that wind deflection so at 500 yards if you're looking at the wind blowing your bullet 22 inches on that 708 that's a lot of movement almost two feet now the advantage of having that faster bigger 28 nozzle or the seven rim mag is you cut that down again it's the same bullet but because of the increased velocity you're cutting that windage down quite a bit so those are the things to consider and as i always say if you're the average hunter or the kind of hunter who does not believe in extreme range shooting and you try to keep your shots inside of 300 400 yards you're gonna do just fine with this little seven millimeter weight so if you don't want to put up with the recoil or the throat burning in your barrels or any of the other downsides of those magnum cartridges don't be afraid of those smaller seven millimeters they'll do the job and i've done it myself so i can vouch for it but it certainly works but still i think that good all-around middle of the pack 280 280 ai or the seven red mag somewhere in there pretty good little option so i wouldn't be afraid of hunting pretty much anything in north america with any of these seven millimeter it's a great all-around cartridge and diameter for a bullet and you get to the bigger bullets and then you start talking about ballistics coefficient advantages some people will say oh i shoot a seven millimeter so i got the best bc no that's the cartridge you're talking about the bullet is what is rated as a bc so look at this little guy flat base 130 grain seven millimeter bullet great for deer hunting at closer ranges and it's easy to drive it at high velocities because it's so light but the ballistics go efficient on it nothing to write home about so don't let the ballistics coefficient argument sway you until you check the individual bullets those are the sevens now as i've already shown you you can have something super light and compact like this little guy 22 inch barrel weighs under five pounds it is so easy to carry and this thing will shoot right at about one minute of angle to one and a quarter and i have taken game out to 450 yards with this sheep and goats and coos deer down in arizona beautifully accurate rifle for hunting i'm not going to win any bench rest competitions with it but it's so easy to carry and use that i absolutely love it 284 i mostly shoot 139 grain 140 grain to 150 grain bullets in it and i have taken elk with it don't think i've taken a moosh with it but at the other extreme is this big guy this is a custom remington and it's kind of the tricked out longish range rifle that kids like these days and some of the older guys anybody who likes to shoot long and precisely you've got a much longer barrel on it so you're going to ring some more velocity out of it it's got a muzzle brake to control the recoil it's got a straight grip it's got the swells in the grip so it's really tricked out for precision shooting especially with a bipod mounted on it or sandbags fairly flat underneath on this mcmillan stock but it's still comfortable enough in your hands that you can easily swing it this way but as you can see this scope is a z8 iso or obviously three and a half to 28 by 50. i mean this is the monitor scope and you can dial it way out there it's got all the long range stuff if you don't mind carrying around a big rifle you could obviously chamber something like this in these big guys too and a heavy rifle is going to help that way because it moderates your recoil felt recoil is a big deal you can see here i've got a little pad on it to get my eye up there so i can see through that scope one of the other issues you have if you get your comb too high the bolt hits it and that's not gonna work so you can put this aftermarket stuff on and tailor it by putting shims underneath it to get your eye right in the scope and i can just squeeze right down on this get a great cheek weld and i'm looking right down the scope but it's not a rifle i'd want to carry up in the mountains for sheep or even elk grate out on the flats if you're not going too far or you're sitting in a blind watching something then those kind of big heavy rifles are wonderful but for roaming around climbing mountains i like the lightweights but chambering in any seven millimeter bigger than this little stump you're going to be able to do the job just be careful about choosing your bullets use the right bullet for the job because it's the bullet that does all the work you know we get all excited about velocities and ballistics coefficients and all the precision shooting things and that's wonderful but once your bullet gets there what's it going to do it's going to break up this is going to penetrate dp enough there's a whole another program that you've got to pay a lot of attention to there's no sense in choosing a bullet that has wonderful ballistics coefficient and it's really accurate but can't terminate that animal terminal performance is kind of the bottom line so consider all of those things but don't be afraid to choose a seven millimeter for your all-around rifle because it really can handle everything if you do your job hey thanks for watching i'm ron spomer and i invite you to become a patreon if you could uh ron boomer's patreon help us produce these videos and we really thank you for that everyone who's a patreon member and you can catch us on instagram and facebook sometimes we like to put a lot of little photos out there and things just to stir things up a little bit we have ron spomer outdoors.com which is our website where we cover a lot of these things in more detail you take your time reading on there and you can find us in several of the outdoor magazines that are still being printed i urge you to do that be ashamed to see our good old hunting and fishing magazines go away at the dinosaur but a lot of them are having trouble in this day and age because everybody watches videos for free and gets online but there's a lot of good detailed information in those hunting publications sporting classics sports the field american hunter there's just a lot of great titles still out there and i'd love for you to subscribe to some of those and check them out because with a magazine you know you can sit down someplace where you might want to be in private for a while and enjoy a read you can take your time doing it and the batteries never run out so check us out on some of those publications as well in the meantime this is ron smulmer inviting everybody to hunt honest and shoot straight thanks [Music] you

Channel: Ron Spomer Outdoors

Views: 320,177

Rating: 4.9336762 out of 5

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 rem mag, 7mm, 7mm 28 nosler, 7mm vs 280 ai, 7mm 284 shehane, 7mm 284, 7mm 280, 7mm 28

Id: V0nBgnQip_E

Length: 30min 43sec (1843 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 12 2021