HELP! Have rifle, need range and power!

[KitaruSapien]

Hello! I have a Remington 700 bolter with the heavy 28" barrel, full muzzle-brake and recoil-pad chambered for .300WM(I load straight from the chamber, never from the mag.) I am quite happy with the stock performance of the rifle, but wish very much to increase the range and power dramatically. I am an avid shooter/hunter, and take great pains to practice religiously with my rifle. My mindset is "one shot, one kill" thanks to 12 years in the Corps, and I will give up lots of meat to ensure the animal goes down fast with minimal suffering(I know that usually the best way to do this business is get up-close and personal, but most of the really nice elk I've come across lately have been too smart for me, and I've had to pass up some shots due to the ranges involved.) Please advise which rounds(wildcats or otherwise)ya'll recommend for long-range(+400yards)elk hunting that would be a good mod for my Remington 700 heavy-barrel rifle. I don't care if it means short barrel life so long as the cartridge is a heavy-hitter and a straight flier. All I've looked at is so far is the .30-378 Weatherby, the .30 Cody Express and others in that category.....THANKS! [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[Fiftydriver]

KitaruSapien,

Depending on how far you wnat to reach beyond 400 yards, the 300 RUM would be very difficult to beat for elk hunting using the great 200 gr Accubond bullet loaded to roughly 3200 fps. You may get a bit more with a pipe as long as yours.

THe larger rounds will run a little faster but in a 28" barrel not by a dramatic margin over the 300 RUM. Plus brass is much cheaper and if you load to full tilt max, you will be replacing brass every 3 to 4 firings with all of the big 30's unless you contain them to under 65,000 psi.

You will have a much higher margin of safety using the RUM over the big Wby or Cody.

That said, I built myself a 338 Kahn which used the full length Wby case as a parent case in a M700 long action and it has been performing very well, recoil is a little heavy though, not bad but I will be building myself a brake this winter for the rifle.

Good Shooting!!

Kirby Allen(50)