Most Canadian cartridge?

Yup, totally agree.
The fact that it has been around that long and in such abundance and is still cleanly killing animals and being used inn vintage matches, regardless of why, cannot be refuted:dancingbanana:
Cat

They were everywhere.
I remember as a kid, my Grandmother had an old trailer ( 16') for storing ... well...crap. Us kids would go goof around in there. One day I realized that there was an old Rifle leaning in a corner... sported 303 br.
Asked if I could have it...sure!
Talked to the bus driver and vice principal ahead of time. Pulled the bolt, boarded the school bus with it, walked into the High school ( Jr high as well...I was in Grade 9) into the VP's office and leaned it in the corner. Lunchtime... walked from MHHS to downtown, dropped it off with Baptiste so he could mount a scope.
Reverse order to get it home... that was the early 80's in a nutshell.
 
They were everywhere.
I remember as a kid, my Grandmother had an old trailer ( 16') for storing ... well...crap. Us kids would go goof around in there. One day I realized that there was an old Rifle leaning in a corner... sported 303 br.
Asked if I could have it...sure!
Talked to the bus driver and vice principal ahead of time. Pulled the bolt, boarded the school bus with it, walked into the High school ( Jr high as well...I was in Grade 9) into the VP's office and leaned it in the corner. Lunchtime... walked from MHHS to downtown, dropped it off with Baptiste so he could mount a scope.
Reverse order to get it home... that was the early 80's in a nutshell.

nowadays you will send to camp for mind reeducation ...
 
I suspect there's not been a Canadian developed and made cartridge that was an all time favorite with a majority of Canadian Hunters. . When I was a young boy, starting out hunting, the 303 British and the 30-30 Win was what I used and saw the most and as time marched on myself and many others moved up to the 30-06 and many to others cartridges. I could be mistaken but I don't doubt the 30-06 is the most widely used rifle cartridge in Canada today and as such would consider it the most Canadian Cartridge at this time with the 308 coming in at second place.
 
Actually, Epps seemed to have shared his findings with Ackley who, in his writings, does not elaborate much more than he know his work... You can find quite a bit of info in P.O. Ackley's Handbook for Shooters and Relaoders, Vol 1 and 2
I have them both, read and re-read many times. Lots of interesting stuff there.
 
311 IMPERIAL MAGNUM



In the early 1980s Aubrey White and Noburo Uno of North American Shooting Systems (NASS) based in British Columbia Canada began experimenting with the full length .404 Jeffery by reducing the taper and necking it down to various calibers such as 7 mm, .308, 311, 338, 9.3 mm and .375. These cartridges were known variously as the Canadian Magnum or the Imperial Magnums. Rifles were built on Remington Model 700 Long Actions and used Macmillan stocks. Cartridges were fire formed from .404 Jeffery cases with the rim turned down, taper reduced and featured sharp shoulders.

Both Remington and Dakota Arms purchased the formed brass designed by Noburo Uno for use in their own experimentation and cartridge development. In 1999 Remington released the first of a series of cartridges virtually identical to the Canadian Magnum cartridges which featured a slightly wider body, increased taper, and shallower shoulders and named it the .300 Remington Ultra Magnum. Dakota too released their own version of the cartridge but chose not to turn down the rim and shortened the case to work in a standard length action. Remington would go on to design their own shortened versions of the Ultra Magnum cartridge which they were to call the Remington Short Action Ultra Magnum or RSAUM for short.

The history of the Imperial Magnums are also discussed in detail in IAA Journal 430, (March/April 2003)


You forgot the .358 diameter which was the 360 and These were built on a sako action and these are the most canadian cartridges IMO
 
What are the great Canadian designed cartridges?

That's a question that many are either going to misinterpret or conflate.

First will be those saying ".303 British". Probably the most significant in Canadian history given it's use by Canada in all the wars from the Boer War to the Korean War. But it wasn't designed either in Canada or by a Canadian. The .303 British was a long established round before James Parris Lee, for a few years a Scot turned Canadian before finally settling in the US, gave us and The Empire his Lee Enfield rifle chambered in that very, very British, not Canadian, cartridge.

Others will name Aubrey White and his Imperial Magnums (and I've sat and talked with Aubrey about how he designed those cartridges after retiring from the Force and later bought two of them). Or the Epps variants of the .303 British. But both those families of cartridges are modifications of a pre-existing cartridge; essentially, giving the parent cartridges the P.O Ackley or Rocky Gibbs treatment (however you prefer to think of blowing out cartridges, their shoulders, etc. to increase case capacity of the original).

As best as I can recall, as far as commercial Canadian designed cartridges, there is only one possible winner. Even if that's because to the best of my knowledge, there is only one Canadian cartridge/cartridge family, and that would be the Ross.

After winning contracts for his Ross rifle for the military and RNWMP, somewhere around 1904 or 1905, Ross started looking for a chambering that had legs for both competitive shooting like at Bisley and for hunting. He started out with a semi-rimmed cartridge he called the 28/06, but it didn't deliver anything better than the already existing 7x57, so he abandoned it; I'm pretty sure it never made it to the commercial market.

The ultimate result was what we know today as the .280 Ross; 100% designed in Canada and manufactured in Canada at the Ross Rifle factory. Not a modification on a preexisting cartridge.

It's not a shabby poster child for Canadian design either. Like the Avro Arrow, it was well ahead of the pack in it's day. Right from the word go, where the Ross Rifle was proofed to 28 tons, about 62,000 psi... few if any modern rifles chambering magnum cartridges are proofed to function at the pressures that the Ross Rifle was.

Compare the 280 Ross of 1907 with it's 146 grain bullet at 3,050 fps to the modern 7mm Remington Magnum that manages to eke out only about an extra 100 fps with 140 grain bullets. 280 Ross rifles loaded with 180 grain rounds at 2850 fps went to Bisley in 1908(?); pretty much the same as the 7mm Remington Magnum with 175 grain loads. The Ross pretty much cleaned everybody's clock at Bisley for a while. Which resulted in the Ross promptly being regulated out of competition at Bisley. The USSR running boar team used rechambered Ross Rifles to win the gold in the Rome Olympics.

The 280 Ross cartridge inspired a lot of advancement in cartridge design elsewhere in the world after it was released to the market in the pre-WWI world. Charles Newton designed his own early magnum cartridges and rifles after looking at the 280 Ross cartridge and rifle.

My brother has a pretty pristine 280 Ross sporting rifle that he still regularly uses to terrorize the local deer and antelope, he's still well above average shooting with the factory aperture sights. He will also tell you that the curse of the 280 Ross is getting hunting bullets of the proper size.

But as far as great Canadian designed cartridges go, the 280 Ross is the hands down unquestionable winner. On performance alone, not the fact that it doesn't really have any Canadian competitors.
 
OK; I'm on board with you on this opinion. Well worded...and I totally disremembered it. Good call...best post in the thread IMO

All good except the 280 Ross was nowhere near as popular in service or civilian use, that is why I picked the standard 303 Brit over the Imperials, the Ross and the Eps cartridges :cool:
I think it does make as the oldest and most original Canadian cartridge however
Cat
 
Thanks Rick, I figured it might be the one,
I just didn’t think it would be the one and only.
Definitely give props to the imperial magnums and Epp’s wildcats but The Ross seems to own the day.
Arguably, Rifle and cartridge…
 
I heard the adults talking about the remarkable qualities of the 280 Ross when I was around 10, 11 years old in 1963/64.

When I was 16 I was staying with a couple friends whose father was deceased and whose stepmother was away working in a BC Ferry.

When I closed the door to the room I was staying in, there was a rifle in the corner; a sleek-stocked sporting rifle with a longish barrel. I noticed immediately that it was a Ross because I'd been given a Ross M10 at 13.

Holy Smoke!!! It was a 280 Ross. I admired it left it there and never even asked my buddies about it.

Many years later I asked one of them about it and he said "You know, I don't know what happened to that gun."
 
I was kinda in love with the 303 Imperial Magnum when it came out. But I was well aware it would never survive, plus being short of cash, I never ended up with one.

We sort of stole the 303Br as our cartridge after the world wars. Most hunt camps either had those or 94 Winchesters in 30-30 or 32 Special as the standard rifles back then. Neither of course qualify as Canadian.

The 280 Ross was simply amazing for it's time. Needed better bullets though.

Maybe we should invent the CGN Super duper long range. ;)
 
From looking through old Game Warden Reports I am of the opinion that the various 32's were the most common in BC pre WWII.
 
Upon checking some background stats for the .280 Ross in the 11th edition of Cartridges of the World, I see that the .280 was designed by F.W. Jones, a consultant to both Eley and Sir Charles Ross. The cartridge was a military design, but not adopted for service and was introduced in 1906 for the Canadian made Ross sporting rifles.

I'm not sure the background of F.W. Jones, but me gut tells me that he was in the UK when he designed the .280 Ross which would make the cartridge a UK designed unit, not a Canadian one. I could be wrong though. Other makers chambered the cartridge as well to cash in on the sudden rush for high velocity performance perceptions of many folks back then.

There was a mad spree of hype over the .280 in the sporting & target shooting circles back before WW1. Velocity crazed folks used it for all sorts of game from deer to the occasional tiger or lion on shots from a blind or stand. The silly buggers that used it on big, charging cats paid the price for this folly and when the stories came out about these incidents, the first one of note (According to John Taylor in his African Rifles and Cartridges book) being that of George Grey when he stupidly shot upon a charging lion after chasing it in open country from horseback.

Grey dismounted from his horse and put 5 shots into the lion before it hit him and gave Grey the "rag doll & rip-up" treatment. The 140 gr bullets made shallow wounds that only pissed the lion off even more. The .280 Ross quickly fell from favor among adventure hunters afterwards but it still remained popular with the long range target shooters and folks that used it on non-dangerous game.

The 7x57 Mauser had a far better reputation on game worldwide than the 280 Ross. Good bullets and moderate velocities coupled with fine accuracy has
sealed the deal for so many hunts over the years. No hotrod loadings needed in my book.
 
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