Looking for a 300/400 yard, kill a predator, cartridge & gun. What would you choose?

[cpttango30]

257 W Mag

Little expensive for my taste.

Good 223 $17.09 per 20. http://www.midwayusa.com/product/116...55-grain-z-max

257 115 gr $63.99 per 20. http://www.midwayusa.com/product/256...-tip-box-of-20

[Maine04657]

Depends on what your shooting. I shoot yotes for the pelt in the winter and a .308 would ruin them.

[CJ_56]

Sorry, but that is passing along an 'Old Wive's Tale'

Sorry but there must be a million old wives out there that say their .220 burned up the barrel quickly. Any round that travels 4000 fps is subject to burn up barrels friend. That's just a fact. It's a well documented fact at that. All that heat you talk about it generating is not going to leave steel unfazed unless you have a varmint barrel that's about 2" thick. Heat warps things. A slight warp in a barrel shooting ammo that fast and you soon have barrel erosion. There's a reason that "old wive's tale" got started.

I did a lot of research when I was about to buy my .223 and I checked out .220's .22-250's and .222's at the same time. I saw a whole lot of reports of .220's burning up quickly. Considering the sources I checked I'll believe them. It is true that a good aftermarket barrel will last longer than earlier barrels lasted but most rifles don't have those modern aftermarket barrels. And even the good barrels can still go quickly if they aren't perfectly cut and with all the rush to produce we've seen in the past few years I will still be convinced excessive barrel wear is a big possibility with any round going 4000 fps or more and that includes .204's and .223 WSSM not to mention several magnum rounds that also fit in that category. There's a reason we don't see 5000 fps cartridges. Barrel wear is a big part of that reason.

So if you want a rifle that you can't shoot more than a few rounds at a time the .220 might work well for you. What I don't understand is why people consider it a great varmint round when you can't shoot it more than a few rounds without extreme heat issues. You can get yourself a .223 and learn to hold over your target a few inches and shoot all day without damaging your barrel at least in a bolt action rifle. You might warp a pencil barrel on an AR but you won't warp a varmint barrel, bolt action rifle. And it's warping that leads to damage. People say you should never shoot a barrel that's too hot to touch. How many rounds does it take to get there with a .220 cartridge going 3800 fps or more? 5 rounds? To me that's a rifle that's not going to last a long time because I won't buy a rifle I can't shoot any more than that. I've sat an fed my .223 Savage 50 rounds as fast as I could feed, aim and fire. I generally let it cool after 50 rounds. Not 5. And my rifle will still shoot 2" groups at a quarter of a mile. I don't think a Swift would survive that kind of treatment.

I didn't even mention the price and availability of the .220 round (well I guess I have now). Plus there just aren't a lot of rifles chambered for it these days. Did you ever stop to wonder why?

If nothing will do except the fastest cartridge on earth then I can see getting a .220. I thought about buying one for that very reason. But I found a whole lot of reasons not to buy one.

[polishshooter]

Yeah, everybody INCLUDING Winchester that introduced it(!) passed on the "Burned Out barrels" myth to push either their (Remington) "new" .22-250 and/or then (concurrent with the first rumors of "Swift barrel Burning" in the late 50s, coincidence?) the "new" Winchester .225...which ironically now is HARDER to find than a Swift...;

There is just AS much "documented" evidence of other varmint guns wearing out their barrels in as many rounds.

There were and still are just more shooters BADMOUTHING the Swift (jumping on the bandwagon?) who have never shot much less owned one than any other cartridge...

The problem was the loudmouths in the 40s who claimed the Swift was THE ultimate centerfire round that could do ANYTHING...when it was lalter found out that it COULDN'T do everything, it was just the fastest VARMINT round ever made that was also highly accurate...then it just became vogue for "knowing" shooters" to badmouth it to offset the annoying Swifties...(GLOCKIES anyone?)

"Burning Barrels" was just another knock against it, justified or not. (How many STILL cite the GLOCK "KaBooms" that seemed to happen with regularity to still dump on Glocks? Been a while since I saw a "documented" Glock catastrophic failure though....)

I will stand by it, the Swiftbarrel will last as long as any, UNLESS granted you feed it a steady and heavy diet of reloads "off the charts."

But then again, the "Standard Load" many Swift guys works up to just to check for accuracy, 40 gr 4064 with a 52 gr Sierra match King is off ANY chart printed in any manual...

But it not only is AMAZINGLY accurate at that speed, but impressive as hell too..and no other .22 Centerfire can do that! Plus they seem to handle it just fine...which makes me think the OTHER "conspiracy" is newer reloading manuals showing lower "max" loads than they used to for the Swift, to make it look closer to the -250, just my opinion, from mine, not a claim so don't hold me to it...

I know guys who shoot that load all the time through theirs, I load mine down a little bit to 38.5 though...


But you are right in one regard, maybe 500 rds total a year through the rifle, a couple of range sessions and a week on Pdogs, is a lot less wear on the barrel than if I was maybe shooting 500 rounds/month...

[polishshooter]

And oh yeah, guys, remember I am NOT recommending the Swift for the pruposes of this thread...

I would grab .308 in a Savage 11 with a Leupold if I had one...

But for me, only being able to choose the rifles I OWN now, while I have a bunch of Milsurps that might WORK for what he said, it would probably be a choice between my AR or my Swift, my best rifles and the ones that I shoot more than any others...

...and since I was a dumb@ss and bought a tactical "entry"16" AR and not a varmint or even a target 20" HB, for 3-400yds as the thread put the parameters, I would grab my Swift for that work first...

I NEED to buy a Savage in .308 though

[time2shoot]

I have the savage 25 light thumb hole in .223 works wonders at that range.
So does my 25/06.