Top 10 Belted Magnums

[Bushman]

That is the title of an article in my new Gun & Ammo magazine. Since it was on the cover too, I made my own list before I looked at the article. The first six: .375 H&H, .458 Lott, .257 WBY, .300 WBY, 7mm RM and .338 WM I don't have too much to quibble about, but do you think that the .358 Norma, .300 H&H and the .495 A-Square deserve to be in the top ten? And tenth place as a 10 way tie listing the: 7x61 Sharpe & Hart, .275 H&H, .224 WBY, 416 WBY, .308 Norma, .375 JRS, 6.5 RM, .270 WBY, .240 WBY and the 400/375 Belted Nitro Express.

The .308 Norma (what the .300 Winchester should have been) I thought was an interesting comment.

Is the .458 Lott that much more than the .458 WM that didn't make the list either.

Lots of Weatherby listings there too. Have any of you priced Weatherby ammo lately? "Best" should have some relationship to availability and popularity to my way of thinking. Comments?

[Sabre]

Never had a bit of use for any of them so could care less really.

[Chuck S]

What criteria did they use or did they tell? I'd eliminate the Weatherbys due to recoil and cost until you get well into the Safari rifles where the average hunter doing that kind of hunting can also afford them. I'd add a bunch of non belted shells that aren't called magnums but with todays powder and bullets give magnum performance. Keeping with the Belted category, I do favor the 300 and 375 H&H due to their long tapered brass for feed purposes and nostalgia. I'd keep the 7mm RM due to popularity as well as the 300 WinM for that same reason. The 338 WM would stay for much the same. I'd add the 350 RemM and that 458 WinM as the first fills that niche nicely and the second is a workhorse. For more power I'd go with the 460 A Square Short. On the short end the 6.5 RemM would fill that nicely and lastly the tenth would be the 416 Rem Mag.

Given todays powder and bullets as well as some superb non-belted cartridges I would change that list significantly, such as:

220 Swift
6mm Rem
the 257 +P, 7x57 and the 308 for economy and less recoil over the 25-06, the 280 and the 06.
25-06 280/ 30-06 if not the above
338-06
35 Whelen
375 H&H
416 Rigby
460 A Square Short

What would yours be?

[Badger]

Bushman,

I read that article and thought it was poorly written due to the choices the author put forth. I have a few belted magnums and think they would have been easier to reload for it the belt had never been installed in the first place. For example, I bought a 7MM RM in the 1980s and soon learned to back off the sizing die and size to the shoulder, try the cases in the rifles and get a slight crunch fit and ignore the belt unless I wished to have incipient head separations on the 2nd or 3rd loading.


The newer, hot (beltless) cartridges indicate the belt on the 7MM RM, and some others were cosmetic gimmics and superflous from the start.

Badger

[purple heart]

I'm with SABRE. I really don't have any use for any belted magnum.
If I was forced to own one it would be the Win. 300 mag. They seem
to be inherantly accurate from the ones I've reloaded for and shot.

[dave-t.]

The two I see the most of on ammo shelves and in the field are the 7mm rem and 300win. It's not easy to find and buy much else for belted mags around here if you aren't in one of the mega stores like Bass Pro or Cabellas.

[Gil Martin]

I have a 7mm Remington Magnum, .300 Winchester Magnum and a.338 Winchester Magnum. They hardly get used anymore. I prefer the .280 Remington, .30-06 and .338-06 all beltless cartridges. All the best...
Gil

[Bushman]

Like Badger wrote, if they can make non-belted magnums like the Remington Ultra Magnums, the .375 Ruger Magnum or any of the WSM cartridges, the belt on those older cartridges serves no purpose. We were duped.

The .375 H&H sure deserved a place, but the .300 H&H just being a souped-up .30-06 that came along 19 years later I thought was an also ran cartridge that needed a magnum length action. I'm sure that it feeds well with that long tapered shoulder, but .30-06 cartridges feed very well too so I'm not sure that it was ever needed.

I think that if the 6.5mm RM could make the list, that the .264 WM should have at least gotten an honorable mention.

No mention of the .350 RM, a short cartridge with .35 Whelen ballistics was ahead of it's time and brought out in those short Remington M600 and 660's. The poor packaging of that round and the 6.5 RM in the same platform was nothing short of a Remington marketing brain fart.

To not include the .416 RM on the big side was a travesty when others like the .375 JRS and .400/375 Belted Nitro Express were there.

Too many references to Weatherby cartridges imo. When was the last time that you saw a box of .224 Weatherby Rocket ammo for sale? And that one was even on the list! If it wasn't for Wayne, a gun guy that I worked with, I wouldn't even have one of those cartridges in my collection.

[Hi Ball]

Bushman all I can say, is someone doing that story doesn't know beans from shoe polish to be polite ok! Now you mean to tell me NO BODY put a word in for the .300 Winchester magnum? How many times did that caliber win the 1000 yard matches at Camp Perry? How about the #1 elk cartridge in the USA today, the .338 Winchester magnum.

Lets not forget the 7mm magnum, a very high in sales since it's inception back in the 1963 I believe. Oh, so this person likes the .458-LOTT hey! Well, it is nothing more than what was 25 years or more before it in the .458-WATTS. The .458 Winchester magnum will still do the job just as well as that LOTT version. The key is to have the proper bullets and use the right frigging powder......NOT BALL POWDER.

I say that magazine article is so far off the charts, I would need an F-16 to find it in the sky. I own a .375H&H and a .375-Wby, .458 Winchester magnum and a .458-LOTT, not to mention a couple of safes full of those magnums in model 70's that started out back in 1958 etc. and a few Weatherby's to boot.