- Location
- Somewhere on the Hudson Bay Coast
When I was a youngster I decided that acquiring a .35 caliber rifle was an absolute necessity. This was no doubt a result of reading old magazine articles that bragged up the .35 Newton, later ones which spoke highly of the .358 Norma, and a pocket book that included a photo of a polar bear felled by a radically modern looking Remington 600 .350 magnum. Despite the benefits of the big case medium bore powerhouses, that my own basic requirements of the time could have been better filled by a .35 Remington lever action, I was hung up on bolt guns, and the .35 Whelen, so the first true sporting rifle I ever bought myself was the more conservative appearing Remington 700 BDL in .350 Magnum, the ballistic twin of the Whelen cartridge, which would remain a wildcat for quite some time to come. I had no money in those days for a custom rifle, and even if I had, I certainly have the patience to wait a year for it to be built, If I wanted it tomorrow, I'd have bought it tomorrow! Unfortunately, the old thin Remington 700 BDL stock, and the factory bedding, proved to be a poor combination for the .350 magnum; it split midway through the checkering in the forend, rearward through the tang and back through the pistol grip. The tough laminated M-600 stock would have proven superior, and that little rifle would have been much handier than the M-700's 24" pipe for the thick bush of south eastern Manitoba along the Ontario border.
The point of this rambling is that we tend to choose our cartridges, less by careful analysis, and more by what has caught our imagination. There has been much more written about the .338s, and the 9.3s, and .375s than there has been about any .35. If your attention isn't pulled in a certain direction, you don't have any reason to go there. If your personal hero carried a .270, a .30/06, a .300 magnum, or if you used to watch Stewart Granger reach for his .375, chances are that so will you. The lack of interest in the .35 bore size probably comes down to just that, it simply hasn't caught the imagination of very many people, despite being an intelligent choice for big game hunted at moderate ranges. But you know, a .35 Ultramag would be interesting now that I think on it.
The point of this rambling is that we tend to choose our cartridges, less by careful analysis, and more by what has caught our imagination. There has been much more written about the .338s, and the 9.3s, and .375s than there has been about any .35. If your attention isn't pulled in a certain direction, you don't have any reason to go there. If your personal hero carried a .270, a .30/06, a .300 magnum, or if you used to watch Stewart Granger reach for his .375, chances are that so will you. The lack of interest in the .35 bore size probably comes down to just that, it simply hasn't caught the imagination of very many people, despite being an intelligent choice for big game hunted at moderate ranges. But you know, a .35 Ultramag would be interesting now that I think on it.