Originally Posted by
FyrepowrX
Have mostly gone to smallish centerfires that dont beat me up much, and shoot the .350legend in 2 bolt guns (howa mini, and ruger scout). Great cartridge. Tried it in an AR for a while, but prefer my bolt guns. I tried some .357 bullets, but found tight chambering, and mediocre accuracy. Had toyed with swaging down some assorted .357's to .355 to see how that went, but in the end i was too lazy to do that. And, the factory loads i tried shot great in both guns...even the cheap stuff.
I have noticed that some load data was noticeably hotter in my bolt guns than i was comfortable with. I assumed that had maybe been developed in AR's with more generous chambers, & the gas port allowed more bleed off of pressure in autoloaders? Dunno, but in any case it was way on the hot side for me, to the point that my bolt guns were getting the max velocities shown with 2.5gr to 3gr lower powder charges.
I went overboard on blackouts..no TC's, but have a Kimber Adirondack, one of the new Ruger Americans shortys, and a Howa Mini...don't do any long range stuff, but for woods use they have been excellent, leave no bruises on me, and are cheap to shoot. In general, the .300BLK has been pretty easy to me find accurate loads with all sorts of bullet weights..ive gone as light as 100gr, and up to 200gr. The Barnes 110 Tac-TX's work like a charm on deer sized stuff at 2000-2300 fps. and the speer 125 TNT's have wrecked lots of varmints. Also found the 190gr Sub-X's shot well in my guns at about any speeds, though when sighted with lightweights, my blackouts have shown quite a difference in POI when i try to switch to heavies...so i sighted all of 'em with different stuff.
Also found that various midweights like 125's, 130's, etc which are marketed as varmint bullets dont necessarily behave like varmint bullets at 2000-ish FPS, and worked great on deer at those speeds.
I've had the .300blk in a 14" also, and it was great there also, kind of wish i still had that...but have not carried pistols as much the last few years.
Thought about getting another one at some point, but not sure i'd use it enough to justify.
Would the .357max maybe work for your needs? Great in pistols or rifles, and you could feed it some of those .357 bullets you have...
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