Weatherby North Mark in 257 Weatherby

I've been using a Remington LSS chambered in 257wby since 2006 and gave taken alot of game with it. Mostly deer but a handful of bears as well. I always used the 100gr ttsx and it has been great all one shot kills but switched over to the 80gr ttsx and likely will stay there forever. Once you see what true extreme velocity and a stout bullet do to animals it's hard to shoot anything else.
 
todbartell said:
nice choice in scope, I am using that exact one on my Defiance 260 Rem
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Yes I ordered this one as soon as I Got home from SHOT show, been waiting for a 1" Razor for a while now. Excited to try it once the rifle shows up. I have been tempted to drop it on to the 222 Rem Mag, but it is shooting so well right now I hate to mess with it.
 
The dollar is really kicking the crap out of this model.

I ordered a couple back at a trade show in December, the sticker price (then) was going to be in the $2500'ish range - now it looks closer to 3K (if they shipped from the US today).

This is a pretty special rifle - designed by a Canadian and tricked out "canuckish" - there is a maple leaf and a north star on the floor plate - nice black spiderweb stock.

The stock material is a carbon fiber and when I picked this rifle off the table I almost launched it - it is that light. Because of that the 257 (or 30.06 in standard) is maybe as heavy a caliber as I personally would want to go. The Weatherby rep assured me that even in 300 Wby it's "quite nice to shoot", but I value my shoulder and that combo in a barely 6 lb rifle is not my idea of a good time.

In the 257 this should be a very sweet rifle.
 
I used to have a 257 wby in mark V stainless fluted. Was a pretty awesome gun. I used it for my main mountain rifle for years. I shot two stone sheep, a couple of wolves and coyotes and a bunch of black bears with it. It killed everything I shot with it like lightning. We started having trouble with grizzly bears quite a bit coming into camp In the middle of the night. Had two very dangerous encounters. My brother in law shot one 6 feet away coming around the front of the tent at midnight. This was after an hour of him running around woofing and popping his teeth in the dark. It went silent for about 15 min and we thought he had left until my B.I.L. Heard him breathing as he snuck in around the corner of the tent. He shot that bear three times with a 300 win mag just feet away while it spun in circles bawling and huffing. After that... I started packing my 300 mag as a mountain rifle. I wouldn't hesitate to shoot an unsuspecting grizzly bear on a mountain slope with a 257 wby. I wouldn't want to have a 257 for a bear that was coming in to camp to eat me in the dark again. I used to load 67.5 grains of RL 22 with either 115 grain Barnes X or 115 grain Nosler ballistic tips. Both shot under an inch at 100 yds and both chronied around 3300 fps.
 
I'm running 110gr accubonds at just under 3400fps with H4831 and seems pretty stable, probably bump it up a bit still. I have some 100gr TSX to try out at some point. I don't think I'd shoot cup/core bullets at anything other then dogs and hogs as there is no way they would hold up in bigger game.
 
blacksheep said:
I used to have a 257 wby in mark V stainless fluted. Was a pretty awesome gun. I used it for my main mountain rifle for years. I shot two stone sheep, a couple of wolves and coyotes and a bunch of black bears with it. It killed everything I shot with it like lightning. We started having trouble with grizzly bears quite a bit coming into camp In the middle of the night. Had two very dangerous encounters. My brother in law shot one 6 feet away coming around the front of the tent at midnight. This was after an hour of him running around woofing and popping his teeth in the dark. It went silent for about 15 min and we thought he had left until my B.I.L. Heard him breathing as he snuck in around the corner of the tent. He shot that bear three times with a 300 win mag just feet away while it spun in circles bawling and huffing. After that... I started packing my 300 mag as a mountain rifle. I wouldn't hesitate to shoot an unsuspecting grizzly bear on a mountain slope with a 257 wby. I wouldn't want to have a 257 for a bear that was coming in to camp to eat me in the dark again. I used to load 67.5 grains of RL 22 with either 115 grain Barnes X or 115 grain Nosler ballistic tips. Both shot under an inch at 100 yds and both chronied around 3300 fps.
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I always love to hear stories about mountain hunting, for a back east flat lander that is a dream hunt. I am glad to hear you made out all right and came away relatively unscathed with the midnight marauder. I agree with your choice of grizzly defence guns too, the 257 would not be my rifle of choice for such an encounter either. Fortunately, (or unfortunately, depending upon your perspective!) we have no grizzly bears here in Ontario, lots of black bears, but they seem to be a bit more shy for the few I have encountered in the wilderness.

Main reason for this rifle is some coyote hunting and hopefully get out west soon for some whitetail and mule deer, and maybe antelope. I have a friend that goes to Wyoming every year and apparently tags are over the counter there and it is reasonably inexpensive, and landowners are very agreeable too apparently. Will be giving that a go sometime soon.
 
blacksheep said:
I used to have a 257 wby in mark V stainless fluted. Was a pretty awesome gun. I used it for my main mountain rifle for years. I shot two stone sheep, a couple of wolves and coyotes and a bunch of black bears with it. It killed everything I shot with it like lightning. We started having trouble with grizzly bears quite a bit coming into camp In the middle of the night. Had two very dangerous encounters. My brother in law shot one 6 feet away coming around the front of the tent at midnight. This was after an hour of him running around woofing and popping his teeth in the dark. It went silent for about 15 min and we thought he had left until my B.I.L. Heard him breathing as he snuck in around the corner of the tent. He shot that bear three times with a 300 win mag just feet away while it spun in circles bawling and huffing. After that... I started packing my 300 mag as a mountain rifle. I wouldn't hesitate to shoot an unsuspecting grizzly bear on a mountain slope with a 257 wby. I wouldn't want to have a 257 for a bear that was coming in to camp to eat me in the dark again. I used to load 67.5 grains of RL 22 with either 115 grain Barnes X or 115 grain Nosler ballistic tips. Both shot under an inch at 100 yds and both chronied around 3300 fps.
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This is the post-of-the-month.
But if you have a partner with bigger caliber rifle, it is fine to bring your 257.
It is curious that your brother in law did not shoot the bear with 300wm the first time. Anyway, this experience will inhibit my desire to hunt grizzly with 257.
 
Was a pretty scary situation and has changed the way I hunt a bit. I always have a dog with me now to warn me of a bears presence before the bear is right in camp waking me up. My brother in law did shoot the bear with a 300 win mag all three times. I had the 257 and we were both sitting in the pitch black listening for the bear. We were trying to make it to the hwy with the horses earlier that day but didn't quite make it. We ended up making a rough makeshift camp about 1.5 hrs from the hwy. So no real firewood cut and the lantern was packed away in a pannier. We didn't even have a flashlight handy. Poor planning but we really thought we'd make the hwy before dark. We were sound asleep at about midnight when my Brother in law grabbed my arm and whispered there's a bear right outside the tent. I said how do you know? He said I heard him woof and it woke me up. I said maybe one of the horses coughed or something.... he said no it was a bear for sure! Just then the bear woofed again really loud and really close. Sounded like it was right outside the tent, like 15 feet away. He said we gotta get the ##### outta this tent right now! Let's go. We both jumped up and got outta the tent with our rifles. The bear made a hell of a commotion for quite a while. Every once in a while he'd get close to one of our horses tied to a tree and the horse would let out a loud shriek. Once when the bear was off to our north making a bunch of noise I went over and released the bell silencers on a couple of horses hoping it would scare him away. Then he just went silent and we thought he'd left quietly. We were sitting on either side of a tiny fire we managed to scrounge wood for,while the bear had been running around terrorizing us. We were sitting there whispering to each other when my B.I.L stood up and looked around his side of the tent. He suddenly brought his rifle up and pointed it right in front of him in the dark and BOOM! He shot the bear in the shoulder right there 6 feet away. Scared the hell out of me! He didn't even have time to say anything. Then all hell broke loose and he shot twice more. First bullet hit the bear in the shoulder, second in the neck, and the last shot blew a big chunk out of the back of his skull.
 
I should add that I didn't fire a shot on this bear with my 257. It probably would have done just fine and killed the bear just as dead as the 300. It just really got me thinking that bigger might be better. Not all grizzly bear encounters happen like that. That wasn't an overly large bear and he wasn't charging us. I just think it's silly now to take a 25 caliber rifle when I have a 300 mag in the safe.
 
Rifle came in today, but for some reason the Talley scope mounts and ammo were in a different box and that did not arrive today. I will hold off on the pictures until I get the scope mounted. But what a beautiful rifle! Very light and very well balanced too, smooth action and a short bolt lift too which was a surprise. Looking forward to getting out with it soon and seeing what it can do.
 
Well I got the rifle and scope and rings all assembled finally, life has been busy between running my two boys to soccer, basketball and jiu jitsu, but I finally made a trip to the range yesterday. Stupid me I did not take any pictures while I was there yesterday so I will take some of the rifle today and post them up with a picture of the final group as well. I had the range pretty much to myself which was great, I could work at my own pace and not worry about others asking questions and running down to the butts and so on.

I shot five and cleaned between each shot for the first five shots, then shot two and cleaned for a total of six shots, then shot three and cleaned for a total of six shots as well. Then I just shot it and cleaned when I was done, seemed to work good for a barrel break in process. I did find that this rifle likes no more than two shots in a row, after that the barrel is very warm and groups really open up. So what I did was shoot one then set it aside while I shot my other rifles for 10-15 mins, then shot one from the Weatherby again. Recoil is not harsh at all but this light rifle is very lively at the shot with my style of using a front rest and rear bag for sight in, the rifle came straight back with some muzzle rise making spotting my hits impossible. I am sure if I held the forearm I could hold it under recoil as this is a pretty mild mannered cartridge. I was shooting factory 100 spitzers, the chrony said the avg was 3350, and the factory claims 3500 so a bit of disappointment there, but the accuracy was great so I don't really care about the velocity.
 
The North Mark looks like a renamed Weatherby Back Country.

Recently handled a Back Country and gotta say I really liked it. Would consider one in .308 if I could find it.

Nice rifle there Crashman.
 
I was shooting my .257 Vanguard yesterday, 2 shots then let it cool down. 2 shot groups from cool barrel were consistently under 1", and hit POA.
I was running 100gr TSX over the chrony at 3200fps with H4831 and no signs of pressure, will work it up a few more grains still.
 
the backcountry is a vanguard built on the howa action. what is the difference between their ultralight, outfitter and the new north mark? seems to be just cosmetic differences between the three, unless I'm missing something?
 
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