True 308 Winchester Confession
I have a confession to make. A 308 Winchester confession. Brace yourself:
The 308 Winchester is still one of the most overly-hyped cartridges in the stable, exceeded only by the 6.5 Creedmoor.
But I still respect them both.
Photo shows 308 Winchester cartridges, loaded and fired.
308 Winchester cartridges and fired cases. Short, compact, versatile. It really can handle virtually any big game hunting on Earth.
Yup. That's it. My big 308 Winchester confession. I grudgingly admit I respect the cartridge.
Rattling the Cage
If you follow my writings, you’ll know I’ve been rattling the cages of 308 Winchester fans everywhere by bad-mouthing this old war horse. It seems odd labeling the 308 Winchester as “old,” but it was hatched in the mid-20th century: 1952. That’s even older than I am!
Many fans are surprised to learn that the U.S. Army didn’t adopt this round as the famous 7.62x51mm until 1957. By then even NATO had already accepted it (in 1954.) And that is basically why it’s thought to be such a superior cartridge: “If it’s good enough for the U.S. Army and NATO, by god it’s good enough for me!”
308 Winchester Confessions Apply to the Military, Too
But veterans are well aware of the shortcomings of military choices. This doesn’t mean my 308 Winchester confession is going to include a 7.62x51mm NATO confession too. As far as I know, the U.S. military confessed somewhat when it adopted the much smaller 5.56x45mm in the radical M-16 Armalite rifle in 1964. That means the beloved 7.62x51mm (aka 308 Winchester) saw only some seven years of service in the M-14 combat rifle as the official US Army standard issue cartridge.
223 Remington and 30-06 Springfield rifle cartridges.
S
ee that gap between the 223 Remington cartridges on the left and the 30-06 on the right? The 308 would fit there as the mid-term US Military round between long tenures of the other two. While the 308 aka 7.65x51mm NATO has hung around to this day in special purpose rifles, it was replaced by the puny little .223 aka 5.56x45mm NATO in 1964. If you're counting calibers, the 26 or 6.5mm would be mid-way between the 22 and 30. Hmmm.
Of course, many M-14s continued in service after getting officially bumped by the little 5.56, particularly in the M60 machine gun. The 7.65 was also widely used by snipers because it’s vastly superior to the .224” bullets fired by the 5.56x45mm (aka 223 Remington.) But serious snipers like Carlos Hathcock used more powerful rounds. Hathcock’s rifle was a Winchester M70 chambered 30-06 Springfield. He used a 50-BMG machine gun to register his longest kill, 2,500 yards. Kris Kyle preferred a 300 Winchester Magnum in a Remington M700 and had limited time behind a 338 Lapua Magnum that he really liked.
308 Convenience Over Performance?
While the 7.62x51mm was used by many snipers, the choice was probably more a matter of convenience than preference. The Army issued 308s (7.62.) If a sniper wanted more reach and less wind deflection, he had to scrounge a bit or request, I'm guessing, a special sniper rifle. 168-grain M852 OTM bullet went sub-sonic at about 800 yards, compromising its precision. Of course, in civilian marksmanship competitions the 308 Winchester established all kinds of records out to 600 yards or so, but it just didn’t have the horsepower to keep truly efficient, high B.C. bullets supersonic to 1,000 yards.
Image shows line of 30-caliber cartridges to put the 308 Winchester confession into perspective.
Putting my 308 Winchester confession into perspective: Among all these 30-calibers, the 308 Winchester is fourth from left. Despite what many claim, it does not produce the same ballistic performance as the 30-06 7th from left. Serious long-range snipers prefer the 300 Win. Mag., 2nd right of the 30-06. This long line isn't all of the 30-calibers on the market, either.
To my way of thinking, bullet performance at 1,000 yards or 800 or even 600 yards has little or no bearing on hunting. I’m more interested in what bullets do at 100 to 400 yards, every once in a long while at 500 yards. At 600 yards I’m more interested in stalking, a critical part of hunting.
In short, my 308 Winchester confession is that I don’t really despise the round so much as the “superior long range sniper round” hype that surrounds it. That’s why I’ve written so many articles (here's one and here's another) comparing it and the 7mm-08 Remington and 260 Rem. and even 6.5 Creedmoor. Since all three are short-action cartridges with almost identical powder capacity, they clearly show how and why their narrower, thus higher B.C. (in a given weight) bullets can and do outperform the 308.
Image shows 260 Remington beside 308 Winchester cartridges.
So sorry the 260 Remington has better ballistics than the 308 Win. But the Winchester is still a fantastic hunting round.
That said, my 308 Winchester confession extends to the hunting fields where, I’ll admit, I’ve employed it in a Kimber rifle to take a mature Colorado mule deer buck sporting a heavy, gnarly rack. I’ve used it to take axis deer on Lanai. I’ve watched my wife and friends drop whitetails, wildebeests, warthogs, hartebeests, oryx, zebra, black bears, and elk with it. I’m aware that W.D.M Bell said late in life that if he’d had the 308 Winchester as an option back when he was a commercial ivory hunter he might have preferred it over the 7x57mm Mauser he used for most of his work.
Image shows girl, grandmother with rifle and a black wildebeest bull they hunted with 308 Winchester.
Here's a 308 Winchester confession: this black wildebeest bull didn't like the 308 Winchester, the woman wielding it, the 150-grain Norma Kalahari bullet fired by that Blaser R8 rifle, nor Betsy's 7-year-old guide Jessica von Seydlitz who likes hunting as much as she likes Bambi. Jessica found the expanded all-copper bullet lodged against the hide on the far side of this fallen bull. The girl knows her business!
And, surprise surprise, I agree with the many, many readers who have written to inform me in no uncertain terms that the 308 Winchester is 100 percent effective and the perfect, beautifully balanced, mid-caliber, mid-power, low-priced, available everywhere, do-it-all hunting cartridge.
Photo shows hunter with Mauser 18 rifle in 308 Winchester and axis buck on Lanai Island, Hawaii.
Here's Spomer with 308 Winchester confession: "I shot this
chambered in 308 Winchester."
Scope is a
, versatile and more than big enough for any huntin
g.
So there you have it. My 308 Winchester confession is that I know all this and I do appreciate and respect what the 308 Winchester (aka 30-not-6 aka 30-06 Short) can do. But I still prefer the 7mm-08 and 260 Remington. But that doesn’t mean you have to! Embrace your 308 and enjoy your hunting and shooting. You’ve got one of the world’s most versatile hunting cartridges.
Ron Spomer has been known to tease, stir the pot, tweak a few noses, and write a paragraph or two of sarcasm to make his points.
