Good Morning
Only looking for any personal experience you have with this combination

I have a friend wanting to use the 300 sledgehammer solids in his early Pre 64 375
He is going after Ele in Matetsi
Thanks
Ian

Dear lord, when will this fad obsession with "twist" relent?

Your friend's rifle may or may not shoot a particular bullet well, but if not the reason is highly unlikely to be whether the barrel's twist rate is "too fast or too slow". The only way to know is to shoot the bullet and see what happens.

Insofar as how the bullet's terminal ballistics behave, you can shoot it 100 different times into an elephant's skull and have 100 different results. If the elephant doesn't hit the ground immediately there are about 1000 other reasons for this than "the twist was too slow".

Thank you for your I’ll informed opinion

As stated I am looking for experience with this specific combination
If you think you can disprove the fact that bullet length, barrel twist rate and terminal stability are linked then please post evidence from your tests at short range on African game.
Short of that please rant elsewhere
Thanks

I would expect it to be 1 in 12 twist, and would be surprised if that's not the case. As to terminal stability, I have no direct experience with the bullet. Have a 375 H&H (weatherby rifle) and 375 Weatherby (mauser action, have taken buffalo with both using 300 grain A-Frames. But no elephant and no solids.

Having said all that - - - Seems to me that if it groups well at say 50 yards, it is stable and will penetrate as it's supposed to. Shooting for group and maybe with a chronograph will tell a lot. Good luck !

Thanks HT

For the most part your experience is what I would expect.
There have been 375 Jacketed Solids from Hornady and Woodleigh that were particularly bad due to design and length. But I have not used a Sledgehammer in any of my rifles before having moved exclusively to GS, Barnes or Peregrines

He wants to buy factory ammo for this hunt and all that is available in SA is the Sledgehammer and even then it’s not in great supply

Either way he will do some testing before hand
Ideally we were hoping someone would save him the trouble of testing something that had problems etc if that was the case

Thanks for your input

Uh, the .375 H&H was originally loaded with 300 grain bullets and all such rifle barrels are made to shoot that weight.

The last thing I’d worry about is twist rate if shooting the most commonly used weight in any cartridge. Go shoot some, see how they group, find some that group well, zero it and go hunting. Simple as that.

300’s in .375, 400’s in .416, 500’s in .458; any factory barrel’s twist rate will be made with those weights in mind.

Don’t overthink it.

quote:

Only looking for any personal experience you have with this combination

I have a friend wanting to use the 300 sledgehammer solids in his early Pre 64 375

I have regularly shot Trophy Bonded Sledgehammer Solids and Trophy Bonded Bearclaws in my 375 H&H with a pre-64 action and have had great success using them-the sleghehammer solids on both dangerous game and also on small trophies needed for minimal damage to the trophy animal. I have shot buffalo, croc, ele, rhino, hippo, etc. with sledgehammer solids, as well as many of my tiny ten-including Livingstone Suni, Sharpes Grysbok, Red Duiker, etc., along with such other things as Genet, Civet, African Wildcat, African porcupine. . . .

UEG
Thanks for that. I’m sure he will end up using them
Seems they have enjoyed great success in your case
Thanks for taking the time to share

Just occurred to me that I've never shot anything with a 300 grain bullet. I'm sure a 300 grain Sledgehammer would work, though.

quote:

I'm sure a 300 grain Sledgehammer would work, though.

Yep. they work for sure.

I have a favorite pre-64 Model 70 375H&H.
I shoot Trophy Bonded 300s Softs with great success on Brown Bear and Moose. I shot 2 Buffalo with older Remington 300gr Solids that performed well...but Buff didn't go down immediately!!
Frankly, I think the 375 H&H is light for Elephant!! I used 500gr TB SLEDGEHAMMER Solids in 470NE on my last one...

Good luck,

quote:

Originally posted by Venture South:
Good Morning
Only looking for any personal experience you have with this combination

I have a friend wanting to use the 300 sledgehammer solids in his early Pre 64 375
He is going after Ele in Matetsi
Thanks
Ian

Used it once, worked well, thereafter changed to PMP monolithics, found it gave more penetration on the my next two bulls.

Shot a hippo in the head from about 20 - 25 yards.Hippo died on the spot, upon recovering the bullet we did discover the bullet bent a bit. I did not consider it a failure as the hippo dies with 1 shpt. I have also shot grysbok, serval cat and genet cat with the sledge hammer. they worked great and no hide damage.

The only buffalo I shot with a sledgehammer solid dropped to the shot (placement).

I have not used the .375 /300 sledgehammer on pachyderms.

I did shoot a rhino with .416/400 sledgehammer factory load.

It works fine, but the PH’s I’ve hunted with preferred I use a bigger cartridge on pachyderms and none have had concerns about “brand” of solid, except one didn’t like the Hornadys.

My rifles have not had issues with them, but I don’t have an early pre 64 Winchester.

Thanks for all of your contributions.

Thanks to our wonderful lack of stock he ended up not being able to get the sledgehammers

So he ended up with some Speer African Tubgsten Core FNs and Barnes RN solids
Nothing else available in time
He will load them and up and see what does best in the rifle

I will hopefully have an update for you in a month or two with some recovered solids
Thanks again for sharing your knowledge