I am wondering something about huntign with a 300 win mag.?

Question

I am 13 ,165 pounds and want to know if a 300 win mag is too much of a gun for my first rifle. I just want a long range rifle but don;t know if the recoil will just be annoying. How has the gun done with you and how many rounds can you shoot out of it if you have shot one.

Answer 1

Forget about it.* That Rifle caliber is not for you, unless you put a Limbsaver recoil pad on it.* The vast majority of Big game is Harvested within 100 yards or less.* Your best choice is a 30-06 caliber.*

Answer 2

It should be just right, good luck.

Answer 3

Try something smaller first.

Answer 4

According to Chuck Hawk's recoil table the .300 WSM produces 23.8 lbs. of felt recoil at the shoulder shooting the 180 grain bullet.  For comparison the .308 Winchester using the 180 grain bullet produces 17.5 lbs. and the .30-06 produces 20.3 lbs. also with the 180 grain bullet.  My friend's 8 year old son fired my .308 Winchester last weekend and liked it.  She (the boy's mom) also fired it and found the recoil slightly painful.  So that should give you some idea.

Good luck.

H

Answer 5

At thirteen, long-range shooting in the field should be the last thing from your mind. You'll be a LOT better served by learning to hunt than planning to snipe at animals from long-range. It'll be years before you should even consider taking a shot at medium or large game from more than 250 yards, if ever. Better to learn a standard cartridge well, learn range estimation, and get good at it. That will make less glamorous cartridges like 30-06 more effective than 300 magnum with less expertise.

The closest I have to 300 WinMag is a bit bigger, 8x68, and it's fine for me to shoot twenty or so in a range session, which is about as many as I've ever wanted to shoot for one session. I suspect I could shoot a lot more if there were some reason. But that's beside the point. I've been hunting for a half century, and pick the cartridge that's appropriate for what I'm hunting. You don't get extra points for "macho," and long-range shots are less impressive than really short-range ones. Again, hunting is the exact opposite of sniping, and it's best to forget the junk you hear and read, focusing on real hunting instead. The old saying is: get close as you can, then get ten yards closer.

Answer 6

you can shoot it , but the recoil will be too annoying to enjoy it like you would with the smaller calibers.

Answer 7

The 300 WIN MAG has taken the African Big Five. Fortunately, using a good reloading manual, you can duplicate 30-30 deer woods loads, or open country 130 grain 270-ish loads for distant deer. Don't fall for the blusterers who say that because they killed a deer with a 300 Mag, that it now takes a 300 Mag to kill a deer. Psychologists have screwy names for such folks! When you have figured out what to do with 300 lbs of elk steak, load it up to 308 specs. For that Alaskan Brown bear hunt, go ahead and use full loads, with the 200 or 220 grain bullets, but be ready for a rifle that "kills on both ends!" The 300 WIN MAG is truly a rifle that can "do it all", but at the price of being a savvy reloader! Regards, Larry.

Answer 8

Well 165 Lbs is big enough to handle the recoil. The neat thing about a 300 Win Mag is that you get loads that are well down around the 308/30-06 if you want to do allot shooting.

After about ten rounds of heavy loads I done for the day.

Answer 9

The 300 win mag was actually the first gun I ever shot. I was 12 years old and around 100 lbs....LOL, so if I can handle it, you can definitely handle it.

I had bruises on my shoulder for a few days afterwards, but nothing I couldn't deal with.

Answer 10

the 300 winmag has a LOT of recoil, and really only belongs in the hands of very experienced hunters.

When the army was looking at getting a new sniper rifle back in the 80s, they toyed with getting it chambered in 300 winmag.  They developed the M24 in a way that would have allowed it to easily be upgraded to handle 300 winmag, but eventually they decided the 300 winmag was too much recoil.

I strongly suggest you re-think your selection.  Reconsider the 243 winchester, 270 winchester, 308, or 30-06

I  have no doubt you can fire a 300 winmag and except for the bruise, survive unscathed.  However, your ability to fire without flinching will be gone in a heartbeat.  You don't judge a gun as 'not too much recoil' just because the person didn't drop it, you judge if recoil is too much based on their shooting performance degrading.

Answer 11

depends what u wanna hunt,eg. no point in shootin pigeons with a 300 win mag. small game should be ok.