CowtownHunter
Senior Member
I read that the 300 Win Mag should have 26" barrel to achieve maximum performance. What are your thoughts on this?
Math says around 21-3/4" is the optimum length of a barrel in regards to harmonics, natural frquencies, etc. However, as some already pointed out, it is a bit short to burn all the powder. You can change to a faster powder though. Might even work. THe longer your barrel is, the more chances you have of there being a fault in it. I try to keep them as short as I can get by with.
Chris
Rifles with heavy 26 inch barrels tend to be heavy buggers. Rifles with heavy 26 inch barrels tend to want to turn nose down on you when you carry them in a sling. Rifles with heavy 26 inch barrels tend to be most useful on a bench or other really solid rest.
A sporter weight 24 inch barrel will handle much better. A sporter weight 24 inch barrel can be very, very accurate.
A 22 inch barrel cannot compensate for what's lopped off and anyone who tries to tell you it can is looking out his belly button hole.
What you are going to do with a 300 WM is what you should base the length on. If you are just hunting deer in Georgia with it then you already have way more gun than you need anyway and you might as well make it a little shorter/lighter since accuracy is not much affected by length per se. If you are going to make some serious use of it out at 500 yards and beyond then that begins to be another story. A 24 inch barrel on a 300 WM will deliver right on 3500 FPS with a Barnes 130 TTSX. That's more than plenty to kill the biggest moose that ever walked this continent, and your chances of stopping one inside a moose are just about zero. Was I going to shoot targets at 1000 yards, I would look closely at the Remington Sendero SF II in 300 WM as a production rifle capable of doing what I wanted. If I needed more than that it would be a custom job all the way.