Why Some Rifle Cartridges Fail

This story, “Cartridges That Failed,” appeared in the April 1981 issue of Outdoor Life.

Three or four years ago when I was hunting elk, I ran into a situation that has become all too common in recent years. The weather was hot and dry, and the elk herds remained in the high black timber. If they fed out into the lower meadows at all, it was in the dead of night. They returned to their cool sanctuaries before first light.

My only hope was to go into the timber and pussyfoot through the trees Indian style. So, armed with a pair of sneakers, well-worn (noiseless) Levi’s, and a jungle-camouflage T-shirt, I spent most of three days trying to luck onto a shootable bull. Late on the third day I skirted a dozen or so cows downwind and eased within range of a five-point bull. In the manner of eager young bulls, he was trying to rush the rut. Considering the circumstances, I figured he was about the best the season would offer. Having promised the meat, I put him down in his tracks with one of the best big-timber elk cartridge and rifle combinations ever put together.

My rifle was a little Remington Model 660 that weighed about 60 pounds and was only a couple inches longer than a yardstick — perfect for toting in dense cover.

Ordinarily, a little lightweight carbine isn’t the right prescription for bull elk, but that one was chambered for the .350 Remington Magnum cartridge. That’s what made the outfit perfect for the job. Slamming a 200-grain bullet out the 20-inch barrel at a little over 2,700 feet per second, for an initial energy of 3,261 foot pounds, that .350 delivered nearly as much punch as a .300 H&H Magnum. That’s a lot of knock-down for a toy-size rifle and a cartridge that measures only 2. inches from the rim to the tip of the bullet.

This rifle-cartridge combination is the darling of the black-timber elk hunters, but don’t grab your hat and charge down to the gun shop to buy one. You see, the handy little carbine isn’t made anymore and there aren’t enough used ones to go around. If you do find one, you can expect to pay a premium because I know any number of elk outfitters who will up the bid.

The .350 Remington Magnum is one of those good cartridges that didn’t catch the sportsman’s fancy until it was too late to keep the guns that fired them in production. Now, nearly a decade after Remington discontinued the trim little short-throw, bolt-action Model 660, and its predecessor, the even trimmer Model 600, we’re catching on to what these guns had to offer.

Though we gun buyers see ourselves as tough minded and selective when it comes to choosing our guns, the truth is that we are highly susceptible to emotion. In fact, we tend to choose our guns in the same way we select our womenfolk. We are often swayed by trim lines and a racy profile, and often overlook solid but plain-looking performers that have more to offer than meets the eye.

These unpredictable impulses keep gunmakers in a continuous state of hand wringing and hair pulling. One manufacturer told me that trying to predict what rifles and cartridges hunters will go for is like speculating on the stock market. You try to look into the future and anticipate public demand, then you build in a few characteristics that have made other cartridges successful and, finally, you take a wild guess. Some guesses have been spectacular successes, such as the 7 mm. Remington Magnum or the .243 Winchester. But just as often, for no logical reason, a perfectly sound cartridge turns out to be a sales dud. Of course, some rounds are really turkeys and deserve a short sales life, and there are some bummers that tum out to be more popular than they deserve.

The .350: A Magnum Disaster

The .350 Remington Magnum is a good example of a good round done asunder by a combination of unpredictable forces. The cartridge case of the .350 is based on the belted Holland and Holland magnum case. Since several other successful cartridges introduced during the 50s and 60s were modifications on this basic case, there was ample reason for the folks at Remington to suspect that the .350 would be a winner too. And after all, the word “magnum” has considerable sales appeal.

Compared with other, more successful magnums such as the 7 mm. Remington, .300 Winchester, .300 Weatherby, and .458 Winchester, the .350 Magnum has a squat, stubby profile. In the purest ballistic sense the .350’s short, fat configuration tends to be more efficient than the longer more traditional shapes, but shooters tend to judge rifle ammo the way they judge women’s legs. Long slender ones have always been preferred.

There was good reason for the .350’s stubby shape. Remington designed it to fit into their little Model 600 bolt rifle, which has a short bolt travel and is one of the fastest-handling and quickestoperating bolt rifles ever marketed. The plan was brilliantly conceived because this combination yielded magnum performance from a light, fast-handling rifle. Who could argue with such a marriage? But even marriages made in heaven sometimes go sour.

The original .350, Remington’s Model 600, was basically a fine rifle but for some unknown reason was needlessly embellished with a ventilated rib. The rib was made of tacky plastic. It was out of place on a hunting rifle and tended to twist and curl like a pretzel. All in all, it was as useful as mud flaps on a sledge hammer. This dime-store appearance no doubt had a dampening influence on .350 sales. Remember, the beauty and usefulness of the .350 cartridge was tied to the availability of a short, lightweight rifle, in this case the Model 600.

Remington upgraded the Model 600 considerably and renamed it the Model 660. This later version came without the rib, which was a good thing, but the original barrel length of 18 ó inches was increased to 20 inches. Like the earlier model, the new 660 had a laminated stock, which strongly conveyed the idea that the .350 was a healthy kicker, and that apprehension was well founded. Once when I was testing some .350 loads at the benchrest, the front lens of the scope was literally kicked out of the tube. So, we can add a great deal of recoil to the list of factors that did the .350 asunder. The .350 Magnum was a ”noble experiment,” as Mr. Herbert Hoover said of national prohibition, but it failed too. When Remington dropped the Model 660 magnum rifle series, the .350 was done for. More recently, Ruger offered the Model 77 bolt rifle in .350 caliber, but sales were so slow that the few rifles sold~’ before it was discontinued are probably collector’s items. After all, the .350 Magnum only makes sense when combined with a short, handy carbine. So, alas, a decade too late, we’re learning what a great outfit the Model 600 in .350 really was.

The 6.5 Magnum Jinx

An equally ill-fated sister to the .350 Magnum was the 6.5 Remington, but, unlike the .350, the 6.5 had few redeeming qualities. Basically, a native American 6.5 mm. (.264 caliber) cartridge isn’t such a bad idea. Six-fives have been enormously successful in various forms in Europe for decades, so there was reason to anticipate similar success in the United States. In fact, Winchester had started the 6.5 mm. ball rolling in the late 1950s with it’s .264 Magnum. The .264 Winchester wasn’t all that successful and still isn’t. Perhaps that should have given Remington a clue. But whereas Winchester’s 6.5 round is long and lean, Remington went for the stubby look. In fact, the 6.5 Remington Magnum round is nothing more than the .350 case necked down to hold the smaller bullet. It is, for a fact, an ugly cartridge.

But Remington’s mistakes didn’t stop there. What they failed to realize was that any cartridge with a bullet smaller than . 30 caliber and called a magnum is going to be judged by American hunters on its long-range capabilities. The 6.5 mm. diameter bullet does indeed have terrific long-range potential. The long, slender bullet has fascinated long-range target and varmint shooters for decades. But in order to work right at the long distances, the bullet must be in the 135- 145 grain-weight range. This gives a high sectional density which, in tum means good remaining velocity way out yonder. Also, and this is vitally important, such a cartridge should be combined with a rifle that at least looks as if it has long-range potential.

So what did Remington do? The heaviest bullet it loads in its 6.5 weighs 120 grains and is mainly a varmint bullet, and the rifle was the Model 660 brush gun. Nothing about the combination made much sense, so the whole idea crashed.

After the demise of the M 660, Remington tried to keep both the 6.5 and .350 magnums alive by offering its standard Model 700 rifles in these calibers. And Ruger also tried making its Model 77 in 6.5 Magnum, but no one wanted anything to do with them. From its beginning the 6.5 Magnum was destined to be a maiden aunt — plain, unexciting, short and fat and, a loser.

The Moribund .284

Another plump little number that never made the big time is the nearly defunct .284 Winchester cartridge. Few hunters paid it much attention, but those who own a rifle in this caliber have a genuinely superior firearm. It has just about everything. It’s a true 7 mm., the same as the 7mm. Remington Magnum and comes in reasonable bullet weights — 125 and 150 grains. With a muzzle velocity of 2,860 fps with the 150-grain bullet the .284 is equal to the .30/06 with the same weight bullet. But the .284 is more than half an inch shorter than the ’06 round. This is managed by making the body of the .284 case somewhat fatter than most cases in this category. If you look closely at a .284 cartridge you’ 11 notice that the case OlffDOOR LIFE body is wider than the rim. This is how Winchester was able to pack so much performance into a case scarcely an eighth of an inch longer than a .243 or .308!

But why, you ask, go to so much trouble to design a short cartridge? Ah, that’s the point. If we use short cartridges we can also use rifles with shorter, lighter, and therefore, faster mechanisms. The .284, for example, was specifically designed to fit the actions on Winchester’s short-swing Model 88 lever-action rifle and its trim Model I 00 autoloader. These rifles, in addition to being strong enough to handle modem high-pressure cartridges, were beautifully made. They were answers to a brush hunter’s prayers, and when combined with the .284 cartridge, both represented sheer brilliance. But, alas, the rifles were expensive to make and were phased out during the 1960s.

We gun buyers see ourselves as tough minded and selective; the truth is that we are very emotional.

For a while, Savage offered its Model 99 lever rifle in .284 caliber, an eminently sensible combination, and Ruger tried to breathe life into it with a token offering of Model 77s. But the concept was too far gone to be resurrected. I’m surprised that metallic silhouette shooters haven’t caught on to the .284 yet. Loaded with a 7 mm. match bullet it would beat 90 percent of the cartridges on the firing line.

The decline of the .358 Another Winchester cartridge that deserved better than it got is the .358. Like the .243, the .358 was based on the .308 (7.62 NATO) Winchester case and thereby neatly fits into short-action rifles such as the Model 88 and Model 100. With the big 200 and 250-grain .35 caliber bullets, the combination should have been a brush buster’s delight. When introduced, the listed velocities for the 200 and 250-grain bullets were 2;530 and 2,250 fps, which is head and shoulders above the old but popular .35 Remington and nearly equals the massive .348 Win.

Ironically, one of the factors that contributed to the decline of the .35 8 was that the two best rifles in this caliber, the lever-action Model 88 and autoloading M 100, were chambered in three other terrific calibers: the .243, .284, and .308 Winchester rounds. The .358 couldn’t survive the competition, but if I had to name the outfit for Eastern black bear, it would be a Winchester Model 100 in .358 caliber.

Winchester also made a few Model 70 bolt rifles in .358 caliber and if you were smart or lucky enough to buy one you now have a valuable collector’s item. Last year Savage offered a plain, no-nonsense version of its great Model 99 lever rifle in a choice of .358 or the new .375 Winchester round. All you need to do is glance at the ballistic tables to see that the .358 cartridge is superior to the .375 in every respect, but this year the .375 Savage rifle survives, and the .358 chambering does not. Whither common sense?

.225 Caliber Disaster

If there is such a thing as a star-crossed cartridge, it is the .225 Winchester. In another era the .225 might have been a success, but in 1964, the year of its birth, it was an unfortunate anachronism. Bringing it out then was comparable to reinventing the .30/30 in 198 l and trying to convince sophisticated buyers that it is the latest.

Since 1936 Winchester had been offering its Model 70 bolt rifle in .220 Swift caliber, unquestionably the greatest .22 caliber varmint cartridge ever offered. In 1964, however, when the Model 70 was revamped, the .220 Swift chambering was dropped and replaced with the .225, a round inferior to the Swift in just about every respect. The logic of this move equaled scratching a proved winner from the Indianapolis 500 and replacing it with a surry with fringe on the top.

The .225 Winchester had a good measure of charm. The rimmed case harkened back to a pleasant, bygone era, and the facto/Y loads were superbly accurate. But the Model 70, its intended rifle, is a modem, staggered magazine bolt rifle that works best with rimless cartridges.

And at that time Remington was just getting rolling with its .22/250, a round with several decades of advance billing as the most successful wildcat of all. The .225 couldn’t compete, so it was struck down in infancy. Paradoxically, the .225 Winchester is ideally suited to single-shot rifles because of the rim, but it has never been available in a single- shot rifle. Offered in a good single-shot such as the Ruger Number One it might show some life yet. But until that happens, it is just another flop.

The Forgettable .256

One more round that never found its niche is the less-than-memorable little .256 Winchester. Though the cartridge was developed by Winchester, the company never saw fit to make a rifle in this caliber. Actually, it was intended to be a handgun cartridge, and if you look closely you’ll see that it is only a .357 Magnum pistol case necked down to hold a quarter-inch-diameter bullet. The .256 reached its high point of popularity when Marlin offered this caliber in its streamlined Model 62 lever rifle. Ruger made some effort to popularize the .256, and for a while, made a remarkable single-shot “revolver” for it called the Hawkeye. It was one of the very few unpopular Ruger firearms. Nowadays if you have either a Hawkeye or a Marlin in .256 caliber, you can garner a nice profit on the collector’s market.

The problem with the .256 is that it doesn’t do anything very well. It isn’t powerful enough for big game, except turkey, and as a varmint round it can’t keep up with even the mild centerfire .22s. Handloaders like to tinker with it, though, especially with cast bullets, and if you really want one, Thompson/ Center offers a Contender barrel in .256.

Other Flops, and a Few Revivals

There are a few cliffhangers still waiting around for history’s judgment and a couple of rounds that have been snatched from the jaws of oblivion. The .264 Winchester Magnum, for example, has never been able to make the big time, but is kept alive by a small but determined band of admirers. The .280 Remington, probably the best cartridge development of the past quarter century, barely squeaked by for years, but it has been renamed the 7 mm. Remington Express and is offered in good bolt-action rifles. It is becoming a long-run success.

The .l7 Remington, a fascinating and truly good little experiment, was victimized by gun writers, who panned it without giving it a try or even understanding what it is all about. It had just about breathed its last when Australian hunters learned that the miniature .17 is tops for rabbits and other furbearers because of the minimal pelt damage. Australians use l7s by the thousands and have thereby secured the minibore’s future.

Two centerfire .22s, the .22 Jet and .221 Fireball, were each created for handgun use. The Jet hit the trail to obscurity while the Fireball has gained fame. All this was fairly predictable. In addition to being a superior high-velocity handgun round, the .221 Fireball is the handmaiden of Remington’s XPl 00 pistol, which in reality is. a dead accurate, short-barreled bolt-action rifle. The .22 Jet began and ended chambered in, of all things, a Smith & Wesson revolver. It was an ill-conceived idea that never had a chance.

It’s still too soon to say how the cards will fall for the new 8 mm. Remington Magnum, and the same goes for Remington’s latest, the 7 mm./08. Do you remember the .257 Roberts? Despite raves from three generations of gun writers and dozens of false starts on the high road to popularity, this round may be breathing its last. One of these days we’re going to wonder whatever happened to the .222 Remington Magnum. Right now its being squeezed out of existence by the .223 Remington.

What makes a cartridge a success when another equally good or even superior round is lost in the shuffle? Is it really survival of the fittest or the result of romance, prejudice, and clever advertising? That’s a question with many faces and no easy answers. If anyone knows the secret, it must be you, Mr. American Sportsman, it must be you.