Just wondering, its been many years since Roy rolled these out. Did a weatherby magnum off the 460 case head ever achieve decent penetration or do they all still fail on game due to the extreme velocity?

My friend, the late John Buhmiller, experimented extensively with the .378 Weatherby case, including necking it up to accomodate a .458" diameter bullet, creating the first .460 Weatherby. He concluded that the case capacity was too great for the .458" bullet and abandoned the experiment, but Weatherby thought otherwise.

I agreed with John, and created my .505 SRE cartridge by shortening the .460 case to 2.500" and necking it to accomodate a .505 bullet. When I discovered that .505 bullets were propriatary Gibbs products and not available to hand loaders, I swaged some 570 grain .500 NE bullets down to .505" and used the cartridge to kill three elephants, several Cape buffalo, and a Record Book rhino. The last two elephants were one shot kills, as were several of the buffalo.

I think the 500 A2 (based on the 460 Weatherby case) has a good record. Kill power comparable to the 505 Gibbs and 500 Jeffery with modern handloads.

My .505 SRE achieved 2150 fps with the 570 grain bullets I was using, which put it in the same category as the .500 NE. The shortened case length allows it to be used in standard length actions, such as the P-14 Enfield, significantly reducing the cost of a heavy caliber rifle.

It will if you use a heavy monolithic HP bullet or a solid. It was or isn't the gun or caliber its the bullet, I had George Hoffmans for a while and shot it into my bullet trap and it went thru it. George used it on many Elephant Hippo and Buffalo and loved it..I sold the gun for him..This brings ot mind the failure of the 10.75x68 a grand DG caliber that failed for lack of a proper bullet and most blamed the gun.

I have shot some game with Weatherby calibers.

They killed what I shot with them.

As with most it is far more the user then anything to make them work properly.

I used a custom .340 Weatherby on my Mountain Nyala hunt and a recent elk hunt and had no problems whatsoever with penetration and killing power... old wives tales about early failures with old bullets still persist I guess.

Bullets of today are for the most part way better than the Bullets of earlier times .I use a 338-378 Weatherby with nosler partitions .It is super accurate .25 inch groups and 1 inch at 300 yards .There are alot better long range Bullets for it now .The 460 is awesome and with swift Bullets it would be totally awesome or woodleigh bullets .

It is not the Weatherby calibers or their high velocities but the poor construction of the bullets that has caused failures.

With today's premium bullets, such as the Barnes TSX, the Trophy Bonded Bear Claw, the Swift A-Frame, etc., such failures are a thing of the past.

I don't care for the gun itself, but the 300 Wby made its bones ions ago..Anybody that forsakes the 300 Wby or Win mag just has no experience in the field, its laid down many elephants and all the DG with ease and will continue to impress folks for years to come and although I have not used it much over the last years, it still amazes me with its score of dead right there kills.

quote:

Originally posted by Atkinson:
I don't care for the gun itself, but the 300 Wby made its bones ions ago..Anybody that forsakes the 300 Wby or Win mag just has no experience in the field, its laid down many elephants and all the DG with ease and will continue to impress folks for years to come and although I have not used it much over the last years, it still amazes me with its score of dead right there kills.

Yes, Ray, the 300 webby is a great cart -- though not a big bore, nor is that case the basis of this conversation

Jeffe
You are correct, like many great calibers it was used beyond its design, but so have the rest of the herd! I recall for years factory Wby ammo was Hornady interlocks! seems like a wreck looking for a place to happen??

My own tests with 375 caliber.

Barnes X originals and my own Walterghogs.

Best penetration is with 2700-2800 gps.

At 3150 fps penetration was awful.

All with 300 grain bullets.

Now I limit my velocity to around 2800 fps.