Rise and Fall of the 308 Winchester

the 308 winchester the world's greatest long-range sniper round the world's most inherently accurate cartridge no it's not [Music] well the 308 winchester does have a reputation for those two things and a few more but a deeper investigation suggests that might not be all it's cracked up to be now before before you throw me to the wolves here hear me out i want to discuss the 308 winchester and settle maybe once and for all exactly what it does do and doesn't do because it does a lot of great things i think it's just been overhyped too much so i have compiled a little list of what the 308 winchester is not and we're going to go down that list and talk about a little bit then you can argue with me so first of all contrary to conventional wisdom the 308 is not as fast and powerful as the 30 odd sex i mean you hear this all the time but it is just not possible i mean look at well let's just compare the sizes here look at the differences that 308 is a half inch shorter than the 30 odd six same diameter same body size but it's shorter has less powder how could it possibly match the ballistics of the 30 odd six and of course it doesn't and we will look at some charts and just see what some of those ballistics are i don't know if i want to compare it against the 30.6 or something else that's even better but we'll get to some charts but for now we just need to know that the 30 odd 6 was kind of the original from which the 308 spraying now a lot of people will say oh no that's not right that 308 winchester was formed from the 300 savage and that's kind of sort of true let me tell you exactly what happened i think i wasn't there i missed it by a year or two after world war ii the military brass decided they needed a shorter smaller more convenient cartridge than the 30 odd sex the case on this thing is just about two and a half inches long they wanted something shorter and i think this is our savage right here they already knew about this savage because the 300 savage had been around since 1920 and they thought you know that's awfully close to the 30 odd six it's used to see exact same bullets it's a 308 but it's got a shorter case and it'll run through a shorter action and what they were really looking for was efficiency especially in all the ammo that they had to pack around when you're fighting a war it's logistics and moving all that equipment around and even when you get down to the individual individual soldier in the field how much ammunition can he carry because when you run out you're in big trouble so they were thinking efficiency so we need a cartridge that's going to do the job that's going to render the enemy out of action but not way so much and maybe even reduce the recoil a little bit so the soldiers could shoot more effectively so that's what they were looking for let's take a hard look at that 300 savage and of course savage was hoping they would just pick that thing up and that would become the new military round and they would be in high clover but they started snooping around and testing different things and i think most of the work was done at the franklin arsenal but the engineers decided there was just something about that 300 savage they didn't quite like something about the taper and i don't quite understand that because it doesn't look like it has much taper to me maybe it didn't have enough taper but it has a 30 degree shoulder which is like the latest and greatest and it's a short action so i think if you introduced it today it'd be a real winner most people have forgotten about it because eventually the 308 took over but because of that taper thing they thought you know all we have to really do because we love the taper of the 30 odd sex is just shorten it and then we've got our 308 so whether they actually took the arc 6 case and shortened it or they took the 300 savage i don't think it matters a lot because they're all the same at the base 0.473 inch is the diameter of that rim and the body size is 0.470 now i see in a few hand loading manuals that list that savage having a body just at the head of 0.71 a 471.471 which suggests even more that the 308 came from the 30 odd 6 but really it doesn't matter it's just a pretty much the same case and it's a short action so the poor savage lost out in the 308 was the winner and it went on from there now winchester i think was involved there may have been other ammo companies involved in this research i think they were just trying to drag everybody in and see who had great ideas when winchester saw what they had done with that basic 308 they thought you know rather than waiting for the government red tape to run out on all this stuff we think that's such a great idea let's just grab it make it a commercial cartridge so right off the bat in 1952 winchester announced this as their latest cartridge for the general shooting public the military didn't come along for several years nato grabbed it 7.62 by 51 nato cartridge that's still around but they didn't do that until about 1954 or 55 and i don't think it was until 1957 that the u.s military any branch of it grabbed it for a military round and then they stuck it in i think the m14 but by the time they did it was probably what 57-58 and gee that ar-15 was coming along already so three or four years later here comes the ar-15 in the 223 remington and this guy is really where does he fit but it is hung around and it was used for lots of specialty applications in the military a lot of different rifles built for our military as well as nato allies and the police eventually picked it up and it became a popular sniper round we're going to get into that sniper stuff a little bit later because i think it uh not all that great as a sniping round yet it's so popular as one what is going on we'll get to that but you just need to know that even though it's wonderfully efficient any bullet that you shoot in the 308 winchester shoot that same bullet in the 30x and it's going to go anywhere from 100 to 200 feet per second faster because well the water capacity on this guy is about 10 or 12 grains more than this one you can just see that by looking at it a half inch difference in the length of those cases makes a big difference in your powder capacity can't be helped guys a lot of people will say the 308 winchester is the 30 out six short and when you look at it i think you pretty much have to agree that's what it is but still does a great job and we'll get into the ballistics here in a bit now what about this idea that it's inherently accurate almost everyone believes that it's just like this is an accurate cartridge i don't think that accuracy is really much to do with the cartridge the shape of the cartridge or there's nothing magical about that it's just a powder reservoir why would this one be any more accurate than this one or any of the other ones why does it have this incredible reputation for accuracy here's what i think happened when it came out some bench rest shooters were always looking for an edge to the competition thought you know a 308 bullet is has a pretty high bc it resists air drag and then it doesn't drift as much in the wind and that's one of the big problems with bench rest shooting for groups is the wind blows your bullet a little too much so they wanted a high bc bullet in the 308 offered it without all the recoil they were getting because they were shooting target groups with 30 out sixes and 300 h magnums and even 300 wind mags but gosh who wants to withstand all that on the shoulder so they started shooting at 308 and as they started shooting some really good groups with it the manufacturers caught on said hey everybody's interested in this 308 all of a sudden let's build some heavy barrel target style rifles for it they built the rifles other shooters came along and thought wow all these target rifles have chambered for the 308 that must be a great accurate cartridge they bought the rifles they bought the ammo the ammo company said everybody's buying 308 we better make some really good ammo and i think they started intentionally designing or building really accurate cartridges and i think that's the key to accuracy the cartridge has to be consistent and straight and have good primers in it and the best powder for the bullet that you're shooting and exactly the right amount to keep your deviations down to a minimum you just build the best target grade ammunition you can and then they're chambering it in match-grade chambers in those target rifles doesn't take long and a reputation is there that is an accurate cartridge no it's accurate ammunition placed in accurate rifles and that's why it became so popular as a target shooting accuracy load it's how everything is put together not inherently the cartridge itself doesn't much matter because if you've got a 308 rifle that's got a match grade barrel and you buy match grade ammunition you're probably going to get match grade performance so there's a benefit right there now there's some ideas that this is of course the superior sniper round because everybody uses it in the military as a sniper round right well not really there are a lot of sniper rifles in the 308 or the 7.62 nato but i think it's mostly because everybody had rifles in that i mean if your military rifle is chambered for that and not the seven millimeter 08 or the 270 or anything else what are you going to use you're going to tune up that rifle and use it as a sniping rifle or build a special sniping rifle around the ammunition that you already have and then you're gonna build some special bullets for it some hundred and seventy three 175 grain sniper bullets and off you go and then the police find out about it and they say you know the military uses the 308 so let's do it and most of the police sniper rifles became 308 winchesters it just it feeds on itself but what is the long range potential of that not so great this is where we need to look at some ballistic charts and i am going to compare the 308 long-range sniper style ballistics against once again that cartridge we all love to hate the 6.5 creedmoor because it is a superior long-range sniper cartridge let's look at the tail of the tape by the way you may have noticed my really pretty little boxes for my ammo right here a lot of people have been asking about that i got them as a christmas present and you can get your own from open range creations i'm reading it right here on the bottom this is just a gentleman retired who loves to do woodworking and he found a good supply of really nice chunks of walnut so he's making boxes to order and you can get him in all kinds of sizes he's got magnets in there and as you can see i mean that's a full box of 308s and it's not opening up because of the magnets he has up in the top i just love these things they're so classy looking too what a guy like me has with them i don't know but they're nice if you're interested just go i think you'll go yeah here it is www.openrangecreationsplural.com openrangecreations.com and if you'd rather call he has his phone number right here eight three one nine one seven nine one seven three and if you tell him that you saw it here ron spoelmer outdoors or just put rso in there as a code i think you give you about five percent off i'm gonna see if i can't talk them into giving 10 off but just see what it'll do for you but these are all custom you can get them in all sorts of sizes 20 rounds 50 rounds 100 rounds you tell him what you want he'll build it i like this little guy right here for carrying in my pocket just three rounds in this one slide it in your pocket for a day of hunting and if you want a little bit thicker one he's got it with six rounds that means they're just great and man do they look classy so check him out openrangecreations.com great ammo boxes all right here are the print outs now you guys can follow along i'm going to put these up on the screen so we're going to be comparing in the 308 winchester a 168 grain burger hybrid target bullet it has a pretty high bc of 0.519 so i'm trying to optimize what this 308 can do in the creedmoor we're going with kind of the standard it's 140 243 grain bullet the bcs on those are usually about 0.625 and then we're going to push that at 2750 feet per second which is kind of right there in the factory loads for the 6.5 creedmoor and in the winchester i consulted some reloading manuals and guides and what did i come up with for uh launch velocity 2690 feet per second it's one of the problems with the 308 of course is because it's got a small powder volume you get those heavier bullets on it to get your bc up and then you start losing velocity so there's a trade off but pretty good option there so 2690 versus 27.50 look at the chart go down the range chart you get your 100 yards 200 on on down you can see now i zero both of these for 250 which does not maximize either one of them as you'll see on that six five creedmoor yet never peaks uh 150 yards more than 3.4 inches maybe it'll go three and a half at some point but that's kind of the peak of its elevation and i've got the 308 going a little higher 3.72 at 150 yards so they're not balanced for maximum point blank range that's one of the issues you come up with when you zero for a specific yardage and don't get your maximum point blank range not a huge deal but it is giving the benefit on the numbers here to the 308 nevertheless you get to 300 yards and you look at your drops in that second column and they're pretty close 3.92 on the 6'5 versus 4.3 so it's like if you're hunting or target shooting out to 300 yards you don't have to worry much about the drops you can easily compensate for that now slide over to the left two columns get past that green elevation you've got in minutes of angle the next elevation column is in mils for mil radians you can skip that if you don't understand it and just jump to the windage in inches because we can all understand inches you know unless you're from europe and you need centimeters but we're going with inches and this is the wind drift in inches with a 10 mile an hour right angle wind 6.34 inches on the 308 at 300 yards and almost an inch and a half left just over five inches for the 6'5 creedmoor so already we're seeing the advantage in wind and this makes a big difference when you're reaching out there guys when you're going long range you can figure your drops because gravity is consistent but man if you don't nail that wind you start to lose out so we want to be tight on the wind let's jump out to 500 yards slide over to the windage column at 500 yards and we're looking at 18.8 almost 19 inches of wind deflection in that 308 but the little old 6.5 only has about 15 just under 15 so we're gaining again then just go on down that chart by the time you get out to a thousand yards which is pretty long range in my life the windage difference is 68 versus 90. that 308 is blowing 90 almost 90 and a half inches in the wind and it's a lot less at 68 so if your target shooting and you're blowing that much difference you guessed the wind wrong you're going to win that game with a 6'5 creedmoor not the 308 winchester that's why i don't think it's the world's greatest long-range sniping route or even target round it just doesn't have the horsepower it runs out of gas and that's why i think it's its future is a little dimmer than it used to be now we'll get to some reasons why it should still hang around here in a little bit but you've got to be admit what the truth is on this ballistic stuff because it's what happens now some guys will say well you know a great reason to have a 308 is because it's less expensive the is everywhere and it's a lot less expensive than all the other cartridges i just never quite understood that i always thought ammo was pretty much similarly priced for the same size load so i did a little research got online of course there was no ammo available anyway it was all back ordered but the prices were right in there and i made my handy-dandy little notes right here and i saw that the 308s were selling for anywhere from 18 for the inexpensive stuff up to a peak of about forty four dollars for some high bullets even if you get the controlled expansion expensive bullets that's where you're going to pay more so then i checked the 30.6 which should run a little more because it has more powder in it right well the 30 ounce sixes were going for 18 but they went up to 54 for the high-end stuff and then i thought i might as well check some others and i looked at them six creedmoor 6'5 creedmoor the 708 remington and 270 winchester and they were all pretty much the same prices as the 308 somewhere from 20 to 40 a box so i just don't see where that's valid but there is a lot of inexpensive military surplus type ammunition around and a lot of people will hand load the old military brass and do a little business with some rebuilds and just slap them together pretty quickly you're not going to get high quality match grade ammunition out of that but for just practice you know just shooting plinking around you could probably get some pretty inexpensive stuff that way so there is that now the the last one i have got down here on my list is this is the most popular cartridge in the usa you know it's always said for years and years that the 30 30 winchester has taken more deer than any other cartridge whether or not anyone can prove that i don't know but this thing's been around since 1895 so it probably has done quite a number but the 308 winchester's been around since 52. a lot of people have used that and whether or not it's taking more deer than anything else the numbers at the sales clerk that's what tells what's popular and this guy is not the most popular in the cartridge but it's a number two the 223 remington takes first place most years this is pretty consistently the second most popular and it's because so many people knew it in the military and shoot it for that reason and the sniper rifle idea it just gets shot a lot for targets and stuff um you know it doesn't have the recoil of the bigger 300s you mean look at some of the 30s here these are all 30s on the table and after you get done except for this 6'5 obviously but got done with the savage there and the 30 30 and you've got of course your 30 out six and a lot of people think that's about as much recoil as i want to handle but 300 win mag is pretty much revered as a great big game cartridge for anything in the world and it certainly is obviously it's pushing about 200 feet per second more than the 30 out sex and then you've got these days things like this 300 rum just a monster cartridge right there but who wants to target shoot with something like that so that's why the 308 hangs in there but most popular and i heard last year the most popular selling cartridge was the 6.5 creedmoor they sold more ammo on that than they did on the 308. i don't know if that includes the 223 remington or not but it really doesn't matter whether it gets sold a lot it's really really popular or not if you like it that's what matters and now i want to talk about what's good about the 308 winchester why would you want to hang on to this or even buy a new one if you're out the market looking for a good cartridge for hunting and target shooting as a mix maybe you do want to consider that 308 let's look at some good reasons to have a 308 winchester all right guys this is the one i call 308 winchester magic of course it's not magic but there's some pretty good things going on with this cartridge first of all it's a short action everybody loves short action so if you want a short action cartridge that's the one that started it all yeah moderate recoil we've already talked about that definitely a benefit a wide variety of bullets you know the 30 caliber you've got all kinds of bullets you can get as light as a hundred grain plinker and then you can get up to 230 and i think they even have some 250 grain bullets these days you rarely see anything heavier than a 180 to 190 on a 308 in factory loads a few times you'll find a 200 you know the really heavy ones that have those high high bc's for extreme range shooting on the bigger 300 cartridges you're just not going to see them on a 308 but some hand loaders find that they can work pretty well with those so it's an option and there's a wide variety of bullet types you get your target bullets your plinking bullets you can get full metal jacket inexpensive stuff you can get some really fancy controlled round expansion big game hunting bullets bonded partition styles all sorts of options because it's the 30 caliber if they make it for the 30 out of 6 and a 300 win mag in the room it's the same bullet you can use that and load it in your 308 lots of factory ammunition available every factory manufactures ammunition manufactures for 308 winchester so you can pretty much get it in any brand with lots of different bullet options right from the factory and when you go down to the store looking for it if that's the way you buy your ammo probably gonna have some 308 on hand except for this year they don't have anything on hand it's also available in a lot of factory rifles so if you like brand x over brand y over brand z and a lever action instead of a slide action instead of a bold action instead of a break action you name it there will be one chamber for 308 winchester the brass is common and abundant obviously with all that shooting going on and you can use that brass to make other cartridges the 308 is the parent cartridge of the seven millimeter weight the 260 remington the 243 the 338 federal the 358 winchester and then a lot of wildcats so bam you get that case and you can do a lot with it versatile applications obviously this is going to be a versatile cartridge with all those bullet selections if you load it down in power and put 110 grain bullet on there that's pretty reasonable small game bullet for head shots so you can stay in tune with your hunting for rabbits and squirrels using a light little plinking bullet like that hardly any powder it's inexpensive something not a lot of people do but the option is certainly out there that's what the old muzzleloaders were able to do back in the day they just lightened up the load and they could shoot without burning a lot of powder and suffering a lot of recoil you can still do that if you hand load long barrel life this is one that you really have to give the blue ribbon the 308 on because it has a small capacity of cartridge in a large diameter bore you're not having anything close to overboard this is one of the most efficient cartridges out there and barrel life is pretty commonly at 5 000 to as many as 10 000 rounds and i hear of people who are still shooting fairly accurate 308s after 15 000 rounds have gone through them so if you're looking for a rifle that's going to last a long time 308 might be your baby and finally i think you could just call this thing the goldilocks cartridge because it's not too big it's not too small it's not too powerful it's not too weak it's not the greatest in any one category except for maybe efficiency it's goldilocks just right 308 winchester so that's the tale of the 308 winchester whether you believe it or not i don't know but you can double check my statistics and please write in and argue with me if you think i've got it wrong tell me what else is right or wrong with the 308 winchester because it is surely a popular cartridge now i would invite you to subscribe to our channel of course we always like to have you do that and you can join us on patreon we've got a patreon community those folks help us make videos like this we really appreciate all the patrons we have you can find us on instagram and facebook love the social media sites i write for a lot of different magazines both in paper format and online and of course you can find us at ronspomeroutdoors.com where i write about this stuff and i have an article coming out on this 308 winchester with more details about what we just talked about so maybe you can read up on that in that site and compare it to some of the other cartridges that i cover at ronspulmanoutdoors.com so once again i thank you for watching and invite you to always hunt honest and shoot straight [Music] you

Channel: Ron Spomer Outdoors

Views: 814,410

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, 308 winchester hunting, 308 winchester rifle, 308 winchester vs 6.5 creedmoor hunting, 308 winchester, 308 winchester cartridge, 308 winchester cartridge dimensions, 308 winchester cartridge review

Id: _d59Pe3bc-g

Length: 26min 7sec (1567 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 06 2021