I recently became curious as to how many rounds of .300wm ammo could be fired from a Browning A-Bolt II before the barrel might begin to wear to a degree that would affect accuracy. Figure primarily premium 180gr. commercial loadings and responsible cleaning. Mine is 14 years old and has many hundreds of rounds, perhaps well over 1000, through it.

Hello,
Can't speak of a sporting/hunting rifle in 300WinMag, but there are several long range match shooters using the caliber and it is reported that after some 1100-1400?? rounds the throat is eroded to a considerable degree. Match shooters will build great deal more heat than a sporting application due to 20 rounds for record, plus however many sighters taken all in 30 minutes or less contributes to accelerated wear. Hunting rifle will most likely never see that kind of useage in such a short period of time. In reality few rifles dedicated to hunting only rarely have shot out barrels, but often times bore is damaged by neglect or not using coated cleaning rod and cleaning from the bore end rather than the breech. Easy enough to check the throat wear if you knew the measurement from the beginning? From what you describe I would think you would not see any lessening of accuracy for sometime, but if it does drop off, try seating your bullets a bit further out closer to the entry/lands and grooves. One complaint about your round is that it has a fairly short neck to begin with and after few trimmings, gets pretty small, but all in all a great long range cartridge. Sure others may have experience to further answer your question.

martin

Baised on my exerience with Match Rifle shooters and LEO/Military Snipers I would say MFD's answer is correct.

For a hunting rifle, if you do not get the barrel too hot while testing loads, sighting in, practice etc. and do not damage it by bad cleaning techniques, of let it rust on wet hunting tris I would think a hunting 300 Mag would easily go 2500 rounds, maybe more.

quote:

For a hunting rifle, if you do not get the barrel too hot while testing loads, sighting in, practice etc. and do not damage it by bad cleaning techniques, of let it rust on wet hunting tris I would think a hunting 300 Mag would easily go 2500 rounds, maybe more

I have never shot out a hunting barrel. I did shoot a 7STW barrel doing a lot of testing and often the barrel was HOT. I could see a .25-.325 decrease in accuracy around the 1200 range. But I stressed that barrel big time. Many loads were at or above max I was simply testing for max velocity. Easiest way to determine if the barrel has lost it's accuracy is simply shoot a group. If the group is the same as before the so be it. If your .75" group is now 7/8-1" for me in a 300wmag that is not an issue. For target shooting that is a different story.

I shot out the barrel on my Ruger 77 300 win mag but it took 15 years. I only used one load in it, a compressed charge of 4831 and a 168 gr Sierra HPBT. During the earlier part of that period I used the rifle for Jack rabbit hunting and would sometimes shoot 50 rds in a day. Later it was just used for deer hunting, maybe 20 rds a year. Groups finally opened up from 1" to 2". The load I used was so hot that Sierra lowered it in their succeeding manuals. I had a detonation with it at 30 degrees below zero and had to drive the bolt open with a block of wood and a hammer. No damage to the Ruger, and I never changed a thing. Shot several deer at 500 yds DRT. Stopped using the rifle because of the terrain where I now hunt.

Barrel life is very short when shooting max or near max loads in the 300 wm.I've reloaded for 6 rifles chambered for this round and have rebarreled a couple.I would suggest moving on to the 338wm and downloading to 300wm levels.

Barrellife on a 300win mag is verry short, aps 3 - 5 seconds of practical use
But some last only 2 seconds while other last 10 seconds.

Awfull thinking of that 1 hours of labur spend on making 1 barrel only gives you 5 seconds of real use