I love shiny brass in .300 Win Mag:
There is something about ability of the cartridge to be able to reach out and whack a target at 1000 yards away on your first shot that I find very satisfying. The first time I shot at 1000 yards I put the first three shots into the 10” diameter X-ring. That is a good as accuracy as you can expect to see at a public range when some random person is shooting a handgun at 10 yards. And at 1000 yards it is delivering twice the momentum to the target as a 9mm handgun would at 10 yards.
I assembled 212 rounds of .300 Win Mag this weekend. Each charge was individually weighed. Ignoring the time to prep the brass, the average time for assembly of a single round was about 75 seconds. When reloading for .40 S&W it is about 4.5 seconds.
It was worth it.
That is a whole of pretty, right there.
I have never shot a .300 Win Mag before, but sure would like to now.
The first time I dropped the trigger at a 1,000 yards was on a National Match M1A with iron sights. Took me three shots just to get on paper.
My serious long distance work has been confined to woodchucks out to ~650 yds using 220 Swift over the past few decades. I keep coming back to Jonesing for a Distance Rifle built around 300 WM using the new VLD projectiles (although the recent 300 Creedmoor may deserve a look, and once money becomes no object, a 338 Lapua) and what’s always stopped me is a dedicated single-purpose optic costing $1.5-2.0X the rifle, and a couple rifle/scope combos I already own that work well out to ~800. But…reaching “way out there” is more than just accuracy, there needs to be enough energy left at distance to make it worth sending it there.
I use a Leopold 4.5 -> 14 power scope. The price isn’t all that high. I paid about $2000 for my custom built Remington 700 and I think the scope was in the $700 range.
There is another component (or ten). The drop and windage is dependent on the conditions. Assuming a 190 grain Sierra Match King with a MV of 2960 ft/second (what my .300 WM produces), if you have a 1000 yard zero at sea level then at 3000 feet above sea level, at the same 59F (“standard conditions”), you will be shooting almost 22 inches high. At 9000 feet you will be shooting over 53 inches high. At sea level a temperature change from 59F to 0F results in you hitting over 29″ low. Going from 59F to 110F results in you hitting over 18 inches high.
You need to know your conditions and your load before you can get first shot hits at long distances. I wrote Modern Ballistics to help explore these questions on your desktop. I also wrote Field Ballistics for Windows phones that I use when I’m “in the field”. I hoping to get it out for Android sometime “soon”.
With what’s left of my eyes (severe astigmatism) I need more than 14X (the Swift carries an older Leupold 24X adjustable target scope and many’s the time I’d have preferred 30-32X), and all the clarity and resolution I can get, which comes with a price tag – $1.5K-2.5K. Ruger’s Long Distance Target Rifle, only available in 300 WM, looks very interesting, but I just saw Ruger announced the Precision Rifle in 300 WM; ~$1-1.2K for either, which isn’t bad at all.
Will Modern Ballistics run on an iPhone (OS 12.1) ?
Modern Ballistics only runs on Windows desktop and laptops. Perhaps Surface but I haven’t tried it.