Winchester Short Mags

[rjpoog1989]

Lately for one reason or another I've been procrastinating from doing my homework by looking at guns (senioritis setting in after 4 rough years of college). Tonight, instead of writing this stupid paper, I've been reading about the Winchester Short Magnums. I did some research into these when I was choosing my elk gun and was at that time debating between the 300 WSM, 300 win mag, 325 WSM, and 338 win mag. I eventually settled on the 338. I really did like the idea of the 325 WSM but it's pretty new and ammo and gun selection is limited. I figured I would post this here basically for discussion purposes, as I've already bought my 338. What are the differences, benefits, negatives, etc. of the short mags? Also, as this factor eventually was the determining factor for me, why no 325 WSM from Mossberg for the 4x4?

 

[30.06]

Benefits: faster & flatter trajectory ammunition.

Draw backs: More expensive and harder to find ammo, rifle barrel longer to get the benefit of the WSM, more expensive rifle, some complain about lack of blood trail when hunting.

 

[rjpoog1989]

It just seems to me that they are competing with themselves with this. The performance of the WSM is not marginally better than the long action magnums. I just can't see the benefits of these. Now there are WSSM calibers on top of all of this. What makes a 25WSSM better than a 25-06 or a 243WSSM to a .243Win?

 

[30.06]

The only answer I can come up with is- faster flying & flatter shooting bullets, that's the only difference.

I owned a 270WSM and was not overly impressed with the round, the .30-06 kills em just as dead and leaves a great trail to follow IF they can run..
Plus ammo can be found for an 06 everywhere and it's cheap compared to ANY WSM or WSSM round.
A friend of mine has a 223WSSM and he is always complaining about cost of ammo and nowhere to find it locally.
Now, if I hunted out west where 300 yrd or longer shots are common, then the WSM/WSSM rounds would be handy, but down here in the woods, 150 - 200 yrd max shots it's not worth it to me, in fact you're .30-30 would be ideal.

 

[rjpoog1989]

The debate over the best deer caliber to me is all a matter of preference. A big point of mine is that it's rather confusing as is, let alone more added to it by these new calibers. I've killed 5 deer to date and all of them just as dead as another. 2 were with the 30-30 and both dropped on the spot. 1 was with my dad's Remington 700 30-06; it ran about 50 yards, tried to jump a log, tripped and never got up. My two most resent were with my .243 and I had 1 drop on the spot where the other ran about 50 yards and fell in a ditch.

Up here in PA you're lucky to see 50 yards in the woods. The longest shot I've taken was with the 30-30 at 125 yards. I guess if you were hunting whitetails out west I could see reason to get a WSM caliber, but at the same time the long action magnums fair just as well. I chose the long action magnum for my "out west rifle" because of cheaper more readily available brass. Also, I've heard the WSM's overall are hard to reload for. Here I wouldn't use either, even a 30-06 is overkill as small as some of these mountain PA whitetails are.