338 vs 300 win?

[Denver Steve]

Yeah it should have been a 6" gong not 3". The 3" is for shooting with support or scope.

It really doesn't cause any pain at all. A lightweight 12g recoils harder then it. I get it, you don't like recoil and can't imagine someone else not minding it or enjoying it. Just relax and shoot don't worry so much about a little thump. Just make sure you hold it properly, that was a learning curve

Some rifles and cartridge combos just plain hurt. I have unbraked, lightweight, 300RUM, 338 RCM, and 375 Ruger. I can shoot the 300 and 375 all day. And the 300RUM is sending 225+ grain downrange with 101.0 grains of powder. So a pretty stout load. 375 is shooting 350 grain bullets at just about 2600fps. And the 338 with 265's at 2550 fps. So not crazy recoil, but quite a bit in my unbraked RUM that weights 7.5lbs..

But yet, my most unfavorite rifle, that absolutely murders a guy, is a lightweight 7mm WSM. With any load. Doesn't have nearly the same recoil, but the speed of that recoil coming at you, with the shape of the stock, crappy buttpad, just plain hurts. I can literally only shoot 5 good shots. Then my groups will start to open up. I recently swapped buttpads and it's night and day different.

 

[John_B]

I'm with the 338 Win Mag crowd. I don't have a 300 mag. I have done load development for a friend's 300 Weatherby and found the felt recoil worse than my 338; it was sharper. If I want thump, I go to the 338. Otherwise a 7mm Rem is my preference over the 300, although I do think the 300 hits harder than the 7mm.

 

[Hmatt]

Back to the topic at hand. Even though today I'd lean 300 win, in 2019 I had a great season packing my 338 win mag Ruger m77 African. Shot just as well as any small bore I've owned. I recently bought 5 boxes of 230gr Norma Oryx on sale, just in case I come across another 338 that might speak to me. But for now my 8x68 shooting 224gr at 2840 fps and 200gr at 3050 fps is pretty much the same thing but with more class!

i just got 5 boxes of the same stuff. Hard to pass up at $60/box…