View Full Version : Unique/antiquated/scarce/niche calibers
I just got done reading two back-to-back articles in the NRA magazine, the first about the .300 Savage and the second about the 7x57 Mauser. It struck me that there seems to be one or two articles in that magazine per month on the use of obsolete, antiquated, or niche calibers.
What is the attraction? Is it just that some guys have old guns they want to keep shooting so they have to hand load? Is it just a different aspect to the hobby?
In the case of the .300 Savage the author included a picture of it next to the .308, says the .308 introduction pretty much killed the .300 Savage, but then goes on for three pages describing how to be able to shoot the .300 Savage.
Not being of the hunting, collecting, or shooting-for-shooting's-sake variety of gun owner, I've always just assumed that if I couldn't do it with .223 I'd do it with .308 and if I couldn't do it with .308 I'd do it with .30-.06,and if I couldn't do it with .30-.06 I was probably good and well screwed anyway (yes, I own a 6.8 now but this topic is actually one of my reservations about that caliber).
What am I missing here?
What am I missing here?
A grandfather who hands you down guns? We have a few Savage 99's floating around the family. .300 Savages, .250 Savage, .243 Win and .308's.
My little brothers hunting rifle is one of those .300 Savages.
My first christmas present was a Winchester Model 64 30-30 from grandpa, which I still use to hunt with.
A few years ago, he gave my son a Model 94 Trappers Carbine in .32 Win Special. Bullets are hard to find and expensive, but he'll take his first deer with it, for traditions sake.
We hunt with and shoot these over the hill guns. They work now as well as they did 50 years ago. Most of the reason we shoot them is sentimental.
QuickStrike
11-01-09, 06:32
I like the 416 rigby and will eventually get a CZ550 chambered in this cal and have it tuned up.
Hope to shoot a cape buffalo with it someday. In fact, I was into reading about African hunting long before all of this silly black rifle/tactical stuff... :p
People have pet calibers. Case design & history/nostalgia makes some cartridges pretty awesome IMO.
I like the 470 NE too. Just might save up for a nice H&H double. ;) :rolleyes:
I think the main rebirth is due to today's improved cases, bullets, powder and guns...it helps turn the old 'tuned down' rounds into a new creature. Plus, us handloaders are kinda weird and just want something different at deer camp.
swift / 257wby / 280AI / 7.21 Firebrd (or 7mm Lazzeroni)
Preferred User
11-01-09, 09:18
rob_s I think the difference is as you wrote the type of shooter. I grew up around guns. My first gun was a hand me down bolt action .22 that I lovingly disassembled, stripped & blued and refinished the stock. We always hunted. When someone in the family died part of the ritual was passing along the guns and associated equipment. And now there are generations through my family that have some very old collectibles (most that cannot be fired anymore because modern ammo is too powerful).
I have a .30 that is just an awesome firearm. Of course finding ammo is nearly impossible. So if I want to hunt with it I have to handload.
Most people, and from your description you, are or have become practical tool users. There is nothing wrong with either, just a difference.
geminidglocker
11-01-09, 09:27
I love every caliber. Why did I buy a 6.5x55, because I can. I think that it is good to own antiquated calibers. It helps one to understand the physics involved with ballistics better. Sectional density, ballistic coefficient, etc; VLD bullets, speed and wind,......
Belmont31R
11-01-09, 12:08
There are a lot of guns in those calibers out there. May not get used a whole lot anymore but they are out there.
I am personally not a fan of the new super magnum wizz bang rounds. Go to a larger gun store with a good used selection, and notice how many of the use deer guns are in these calibers. They are too much for most people, and you get diminishing returns because people develop flinches, the rounds are 2-3X as much money, and they don't really do anything for 95% of hunters.
Gun manufacturers have phased the old reliable calibers out of production so the only way to buy a new one is a special run from time to time or a custom build.
With the 7x57 its also not 'American', and few Euro calibers have really taken off here. The .270 win is pretty close, and probably sold 20:1 or more.
Outlander Systems
11-01-09, 12:09
I'm still waiting for an AR chambered in .404 Jeffery.
ETA: Honestly Rob, I think it falls into the emotional/whimsical/fantasy-based category. Those who assess everything from a pragmatic standpoint, will often rule out exotic calibres altogether. A prime example of the WTF factor was the last time I went to a gun show with a buddy from work. I spent the whole time trying to find Magpul followers, and when I met back up with him, he said, "I finally found a handgun!". It was a Browing Hi-Power in a wonky-assed calibre. Bear in mind this would be his first handgun, and wanted it as a carry weapon. I had to tell him, as nicely as I could, that he'd have better luck bagging a mermaid on his next fishing trip, than finding ammunition for it. He asked me multiple times if I was "sure" he shouldn't get it. When I suggested a Glock, he told me those were "thug guns", and scoffed.
You can lead a horse to water...
Belmont31R
11-01-09, 12:14
I'm still waiting for an AR chambered in .404 Jeffery.
My ultimate dream gun is a Holland and Holland SxS 500NE. I could use an AR in 500NE too, though....:cool:
For me it could be a way to touch the past. I don't have any of the oddball type calibers but whenever I shoot my Colt 1911 (1913 mfg) I think back of who it was issued too as well as immediately think of my best friend who just gave me the pistol.
Lots of them are fun. You could get inexpensive .303 british surplus guns and 6.5x55 Swedes (which are darn accurate) in the 90s for under $100 a pop. They are history. They are fun. And at least in .303 and 6.5x55 you can easily buy ammo for them, both surplus and commercial, if you don't want to handload.
Same with 8mm and 7mm mauser. Lots of guns out there -- they work and are history and you can buy ammo if you don't handload.
Some of the really obscure stuff -- the guys who shoot those are into history, or family history/heirlooms, or the love of shooting.
I have a few 7mm and 8mm mausers but none of them are shootable at the moment. But my 6.5x55 and 303 I have SHTF ammo stashed for as well as normal shooting ammo and the stuff to load them with. In fact the 6.5x55 M38 swede with the Leupold 3x9 I added is what I want to take hunting when I get around to learning hunting (my dad did not hunt so I do not hunt, yet). It is super accurate. And fun. And a piece of history.
The 6.5x55 Ljungman is also interesting and a piece of history.
MarshallDodge
11-01-09, 13:01
Rob, I think you partially answered your own question- you are not a hunter.
One of my buddies, a hunter, shoots a 444 Marlin because he can load the same bullets in his 44 Magnum. I like 45 Colt and ACP because I can load the same bullets in my carbine, revolver, and 1911. If it wasn't for Cowboy Action, 45 Colt would have gone the way of the Dodo. I have a varmint rifle in 17-222 which is a wildcat. Sure, I could do the same thing with a 223 but you should see how that little 17 caliber bullet performs on a prairie poodle. :cool:
Like Belmont31, I tend to be on the side of why do we need another whiz bang caliber when there are quite a few good ones already on the market. I guess there will always be a few niches that the current offerings don't cover.
I think an analogy can be drawn by looking at the different AR configurations. Carbine, Rifle, Middy, SPR.....
Not everyone is into the latest and greatest guns or calibers or having lots of guns. There was an old mindset of you get a gun and keep it for life. Some people have the same gun(s) that they had 40 years ago or got handed down to them and put about 2 boxes of ammo through it a year. Be glad that those people are NRA members.
I'm not sure anyone would start out today with a .300 Savage.
7mm Mauser is another thing, since there are many interesting milsurp guns available in that caliber and it makes a good medium game round.
K.L. Davis
11-01-09, 15:54
I used to have a bolt action '06AI that was probably the best all around rifle cartridge I ever owned...
If you have never dumped a few mags through a pistol chambered in 9X25, well you need to add that to your list!
The 6.5-284 defines long range accuracy in a conventional rifle.
If a person wants to own an odd-ball cartridge, what the heck... maybe part of it is just having something that is different and uncommon?
Some of it is nostalgia. In my case I just like certain rifles for their technical characteristics and design, accuracy, or as I already mentioned, nostalgia.
Anybody else own and shoot a Model 71 in .348 Winchester? The only factory rifles chambered for this cartridge were the Winchester Model 71s and the later reproduction Japanese Browning copies.
I generally use a .308 or .30-06 Model 70 Winchester for deer hunting, but I'd have no problems with a plain old .30-30. Last year I gave my son the only .30-30 Marlin I had, after he shot his first deer with it.
MPi-KMS-72
11-01-09, 17:32
I just got done reading two back-to-back articles in the NRA magazine, the first about the .300 Savage and the second about the 7x57 Mauser. It struck me that there seems to be one or two articles in that magazine per month on the use of obsolete, antiquated, or niche calibers.
What is the attraction? Is it just that some guys have old guns they want to keep shooting so they have to hand load? Is it just a different aspect to the hobby?
It may seem impractical but oddball calibers are here to stay they have their own breed of enthusiast for a variety of reasons-
For me- I enjoy seeing the different ways people went about designing rifles to all essentially do the same thing. The different approaches that the designers used to make a rifle. To compare and contrast how the Krag, compares to a 1903 Springfield as compared to a Lee Enfield, and a Lebel, to an 1895 Winchester and etc. They all do the same thing but in very different ways- Naturally if you are going to shoot them it involves using ammunition that isn't as common or popular today.
Nonetheless these rifles still do the job as well as they did it 100 years ago. They may be "obsolete" but they are no less effective than they once were.
It is all rather fascinating.
The same is true of sporting rifle designs- I have a friend who has a Savage 99 in .303 Savage that has probably taken game for 95 years. His grandfather used to carve a notch on the forend for every animal taken- there were ~ 45 Whitetails, 8 bear, 3 moose and a number of other game taken with it by just him, (His son and grandson didn't continue the notches when they took the rifle over.) For that family it is a neat piece of continuity for them- and it still kills game as well as it ever did. So why not use it? Sure they could sell it off and buy a new Remington 700 in whatever latest caliber they wanted but why?
I'll never get rid of my Schultz & Larsen 54J (in 7x61 Sharpe & Hart) that I inherited from my dad.
Fighting guns are all well and good, but other guns hold sentimental value for me of are just plain interesting.
Modern reloading popularity is bringing back a lot of cartridges previously lost to time. Heck, look at how many cartridges are offshoots of the oddballs of the world!
The practical part of me agrees with you (Rob), in that I think it's almost silly to get involved in something that will more than likely play no role in me acquiring the skills to use a firearm to protect me and mine and/or put food on the table. The science student in me, though, gets excited thinking about perfecting the centerfire metallic cartridge, and maybe even designing a rifle around it. The history lover in me adds yet a third perspective: I like C&R firearms, and it's damn cool to think of who might have carried the gun and where it might have been. To know that your M1 stormed Normandy, or your Finnish 91/30 helped fend off the Soviet army in the late '30s and early '40s, stuff like that is just cool as hell to me. I haven't been around shooting long enough to wax nostalgic toward certain guns or calibers, but I bet when I am a little older I probably will if any of my odd calibers become endangered or extinct.
-B
I just used to love reloading a lot. The one round at a time completely handcrafted single stage work of art love. When I get my stuff wired tight, I'm going to do it again. I also loved the old guns I was reloading for. In a lot of cases, mostly with the more modern ones, I was going for something too.
.455 Webley, awesome pistol, good smokeshow, shows you care enough to use the very obsoletest
.30 Luger, awesome pistol, sexy, just....sexy
.22 Hornet, Coolest round ever made, I want an AR in this round
45-70, Trapdoor springfield, fill it with pyrodex and put a big honkin bullet on top. easiest round ever loaded, and hearing the Thwak! when the round hits the dirt is cool
.22ppc, most accurate round evahhh, it is soooooo cool to hit what you aim at, and then shoot it through the same hole again, and again, and again.....
.220 Swift, fast is beautiful, and you get the other exotic things that come with this round, like adventures in very hard carbon buildup and the amazing chronograph ring destroying disintegrating bullet , loved it
Some of it is the cool gun, some of it is round love, with me anyway...:)
ETA: Just thought about it a little more, and another answer is, it's the same reason that some folks collect baseball cards or have a flower garden, not very useful either, but I guess they're fun to the folks who do ithem
The one firearm I own in an obsolete caliber is my grandfather's Winchester Model 1907 in .351 Winchester Self Loading. Everything else I own has ammunition readily available.
NMBigfoot02
11-02-09, 16:12
I understand the practicality point, but variety is the spice of life!
The fact that you aren't a hunter/collector/shooting-for-shooting's-sake gun owner is most likely the reason you see no need to own anything other than the 3 calibers you listed. There's nothing wrong with those 3, and I agree it's more practical to standardize calibers.
I'd still never give up the .303 SMLE my Dad and all of his brothers used to hunt with when they were young. Nor would I part with the .30-30 he gave me as my first deer rifle at 13.
Different strokes...
REALLY dedicated rifle loonies are a strange lot. I know, as I once suffered from the affliction.
I could argue the perceived merits of the .280 Rem over the .270 Win for hours. I was on a first name basis with three barellmakers and several noted gunsmiths. My loading bench had more custom dies than run of the mill sets. I was hooked!
Big game hunting only adds to the suffering. The true loonie needs SEVERAL rifles for even the lowly deer. Throw in elk, LR antelope, the big bears or the best excuse of ALL for experimentation ....hunting Africa. And you can quickly understand why one needs a battery of rifles that can accurately fling slugs from 100 to 500 grs at every possible velocity from 2100 to 3300 fps.
HOW I ever killed all those elk and deer way back with factory guns and over the counter ammo is beyond me! Each and every situation and species REQUIRES its own special rifle and caliber.
Then again many hunters/shooters simply like to have something a bit different. Why shoot your deer with a 7mm-08 when you can use a .257 Roberts Ackley Improved? Or some oddball European caliber? Elk? A .338-06 or 9.3x62 mm is SO much more fun than the boring .30-06. It's all about style points.
Then theres the fellows who are addicted to FPS. Why shoot an 8 oz gopher with a 50 gr pill at 3200 fps when with some judicious rebarreling ands reaming you could hit him at 4100 FPS?? Those extra FPS are the Holy Grail to thousands of loonies.
Seriously though....wildcats, european ctg's, and the early American rounds are simply fun to play with. Or to allow getting an old gun back into action again.
All this coming from a guy with; .257 Roberts AI, .280 Rem AI, .300 H&H (two of them) , .375 H&H (again,two of them) 9.3x62, .338-06 and a few others. I've also fooled with the .416 Rigby and the .338 Lapua.
FN in MT
Obsolesence is in the eye of the beholder. For me, one hasn't lived til you have touched off an 8x56R in a 7lb. carbine! Having 70yr old ammo that goes bang every time is a testament to old world Austrian quality.
Along with my .45LC, .45-70, .44WCF and .35Rem, my favorite is a Marlin lever action in .32WCF (.32-20). A PITA to reload for and too small for deer, but a sweet small game cartridge. I've loaded everything from "gallery loads" for backyard practice to hot-rodded hollowpoints for varmints in it.
I have a pair of Colts chambered in .38 Super and my dad probably has 6 or 7 more, it's more of family infatuation as its the round most of my family used in Cuba, way back when.
My first personal pistol was a Gov't Model chambered in the round, and it was awesome...still is actually. Just a little bit expensive and hard to find.
Is .38 Super considered antiquated, scarce, unique and/or niche?
REALLY dedicated rifle loonies are a strange lot. I know, as I once suffered from the affliction.
I could argue the perceived merits of the .280 Rem over the .270 Win for hours. I was on a first name basis with three barellmakers and several noted gunsmiths. My loading bench had more custom dies than run of the mill sets. I was hooked!
Big game hunting only adds to the suffering. The true loonie needs SEVERAL rifles for even the lowly deer. Throw in elk, LR antelope, the big bears or the best excuse of ALL for experimentation ....hunting Africa. And you can quickly understand why one needs a battery of rifles that can accurately fling slugs from 100 to 500 grs at every possible velocity from 2100 to 3300 fps.
HOW I ever killed all those elk and deer way back with factory guns and over the counter ammo is beyond me! Each and every situation and species REQUIRES its own special rifle and caliber.
Then again many hunters/shooters simply like to have something a bit different. Why shoot your deer with a 7mm-08 when you can use a .257 Roberts Ackley Improved? Or some oddball European caliber? Elk? A .338-06 or 9.3x62 mm is SO much more fun than the boring .30-06. It's all about style points.
Then theres the fellows who are addicted to FPS. Why shoot an 8 oz gopher with a 50 gr pill at 3200 fps when with some judicious rebarreling ands reaming you could hit him at 4100 FPS?? Those extra FPS are the Holy Grail to thousands of loonies.
Seriously though....wildcats, european ctg's, and the early American rounds are simply fun to play with. Or to allow getting an old gun back into action again.
All this coming from a guy with; .257 Roberts AI, .280 Rem AI, .300 H&H (two of them) , .375 H&H (again,two of them) 9.3x62, .338-06 and a few others. I've also fooled with the .416 Rigby and the .338 Lapua.
FN in MT
That pretty much gibes with what my perception was. Thanks for that post.
and thanks to everyone for the civil responses. Often threads like this turn to shit because people take questions like these as attacks of a personal nature. I tend to ask questions about things I don't understand to see if maybe I'm missing something, or missing out on something.
It seems that in this case the impetus comes from a few angles to include nostalgia, chasing ballistic minutia, and the pure enjoyment of touching off the round itself. None of those apply to me right now but I certainly understand and respect all of them.
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