A Gun a Week: Remington M700 Classic, 350 Remington Magnum

Remington Model 700 Classic in 350 Remington Magnum.

For me, this rifle's story starts back in 2000 when the first "new" shorts magnums started trickling out from Winchester. The short, fat cartridges were all the rage at the time, and of course, being a new rifle shooter, I had to have one. But of course, I didn't want to pay for one. And part of my education of all things shooting was the realization that one can buy an old, plain-Jane rifle at a pawn shop, buy a new barrel to make it into something completely different, and pay a gunsmith to do all the work. And many times, you come out spending less than if you'd just gone to a store and bought a brand new rifle. At the very least, you spread the payments out over months and months as you accumulate the components...can be years depending on your gunsmith--don't be in a hurry.

And so the mission in those days was to find a short action rifle for sale that I could have converted. However, I had no idea that these short magnums' cartridge cases are bigger than "standard" chamberings and wouldn't even fit standard, short-action rifle bolts! So I was actually haunting pawn shops and gun stores searching for the wrong thing but didn't realize it. And it was on one of these forays on an after-work Friday afternoon that I found a used Remington 700 on the rack that caught my eye.

These days, it's almost a reloader's-only proposition since loaded ammunition
is kind of hard to come by. You won't find any at Walmart.

What made this Remington Model 700 stand out was its trim and checkered walnut stock. The cookie-cutter stocks that Remington was cranking out in those days were super-glossy hardwoods featuring "skip line" checkering that I imagine were cut by a robot, or good old black plastic. Nothing I'd seen before had sported such a fine looking, yet simple piece of wood. There was no pistol grip cap, no wedge of a cheek piece on the left side so common in other rifles--meant to make them more comfortable, but only for right-handed shooters--just straight-grained walnut with a finely cut, yet bold-to-the-touch checkering. 

The bluing was still bright and shiny, but the bolt had a lovely plum-colored "patina" to it. When you see a used firearm with that plum color to it, you know it's probably a vintage firearm and that the steel is high in nickel. I happen to love old firearms and love ones that show honest wear like the ghost of a previous owner, or faded colors that hint at all the time they've spent in the rack or a safe. This rifle was well cared for, not having any dings on it, and was in close to mint condition in spite of the purple haze on the bolt. Picking it up, the next thing I looked for was what cartridge it was chambered for.

The bolt shows the plum colour and the stock shines. The classic checkering is bold
and feels (and looks) much better than Remington's "skip line", robot cut checkering.

Stamped on the barrel was 350 REM MAG. Say what? I'd never heard of it, but luckily I was in an old-school gun store, The Gun Room, so all I had to do was put the rifle down and walk over to the reloading section and pick up a Hornady Manual and look for this cartridge. And sure enough, there was the page on 350 Remington Magnum. One-stop gunstores like that are few and far between these days--possibly a testament to less shooters in the world or the rise of online shopping. I don't know. Recently though, there's been an uptick in interest as hordes of people have started hoarding ammunition driving already-high prices higher...most blame the POTUS and his administration, but I  digress...

On the spot I learned the cartridge had come out in 1965. That's right, in 1965, a short-action sized cartridge, with a belted magnum case such as the grand pappy of all belted-magnums, the 300 H&H (introduced in 1925), was released to the public. This happened about 36 years before Winchester got around to revealing their "new" short-action magnum...again. Remington would amazingly follow suit a few years later with their Short Action Ultra Magnum series! It still boggles my mind that they had not supported their first entry into the short magnum craze, but what do I know. They came back around to it in 2003 with a jazzed up Model Seven (more on the Model Seven later!) but only for a year...

The "problem" with this cartridge is that it fits into a short action rifle which is always going to be somewhat lightweight. Couple that with a case that holds as much powder as a long action cartridge like the 30-06 and you get recoil...lots of recoil. Back in 1965, Remington stuck this stomper in a weird little carbine, crippling the cartridge with a short barrel and light weight action. Short barrels rob cartridges of velocity. If they had introduced the cartridge in a good ol' Model 700 with a 22 inch barrel, it might've gone somewhere! And that's where this 700 Classic comes sweeping in to save the day...just a tad too late.

I fitted an after-market recoil pad to the stock since the factory "pad"
was just a hunk of hard rubber and not a pad at all. This rifle kicks a bit.

It weighs just enough to keep recoil from detaching your retina when you shoot it, and the 22 inch long barrel is just long enough to let you launch a 200 grain, .358 caliber bullet along at damn near 2800 feet per second on a warm summer day. And that is plenty of gun for anything you care to hunt in NC and probably all of North America. If you live by the great Robert Ruark's teachings as I do, then you know you must always "Use enough gun," and this rifle will hunt.

I'm a big fan of low-power scopes like a 2-7X or a 2.5-8X. They are all the
magnification you need in NC and have plenty of eye relief  that keep you from
dinging your forehead.

I've taken this rifle hunting once which opened my eyes to another aspect of hunting that had never occurred to me before I was in the field with what I consider one of my finest rifles, and that is the fear of scratching or dinging it! This new found fear wasn't a problem for me during the dry, sunny morning hunt. I crunched through the leaves in the dark to the stand, climbed up and at day break chose a doe to shoot in the classic broadside 96 yards away. 

Having only shot paper with the rifle, I still expected the doe to fall over dead after being struck with the 200 grain bullet, but that was not the case. I watched her take the bullet and run back into the thicket. When you're hunting, even though you've practiced and practiced at the bench, and your game runs off after being shot, there's always a nagging feeling that you might've missed. Well, the doe had not run very far. Less than ten yards from the spot I'd shot her I found her. The old Classic had done its job.

Now the second hunt of the day was more nerve wracking for someone with a new found fear of damaging his rifle. Somewhere during the day it had started snowing, and by the time I was heading back to the stand, it was pouring. We all know that snow is just glorified rain, and rain is wet, and my Classic is steel and wood--two things that hate to get wet! I was sweating all that snow falling on my rifle on my way to the "green" stand when I looked up and saw two does pawing in the shallow snow trying to eat across a gully from me. Still about a hundred yards away, I just sat down in the snow, rested the rifle on my knee, cinched up as tight as I could and shot one.

This doe took the 350's bullet as I'd expected. Not a step. She dropped, kicked a little, and slid down the slope to the bottom of the gully. It was something to see--awful and thrilling all at the same time. Since it was snowing I didn't wait around for everyone else on "the farm" to finish hunting and I dragged her up to my truck quietly in the the snow by myself. And by the time all my buddies were done hunting, it was dark and cold, and it was decided that it'd be more convenient if I took my deer, and one of my buddy's, to a processor instead of trying to do it ourselves during a cold snowfall in the dark.

They jeweled the bolt too, a touch of class.

It was at the processors that I saw something very revealing about the 350 Rem Mag. Two guys were at the gambrels so I had the opportunity to see our two deer skinned and prepped at the same time. I looked at the damage my 200 grain Hornady had done to my doe and wasn't surprised. 100 yards shot, small entrance wound and larger exit wound on the opposite shoulder, but my buddy's doe, shot with the grand old 270 Winchester cartridge was damaged more severely. In fact, the off side leg fell off with the hide as the fellow skinned her! My buddy had said it was a hundred yard shot also, but it just goes to show you, that the "slow" and heavy 350 bullet is just as lethal yet less damaging as a fast, non-magnum, 130 grain 270 bullet. Yes, the evidence in anecdotal, but there it was. I think I was more impressed than anyone there. But that's just me.

No, I ain't going to rebarrel this rifle any time soon. That would be nutty. I mean, there's a reason the company manufactured this rifle and called it "Classic". It doesn't get any better, yet simpler than this rifle: American Walnut, straight-combed stock, and chambered for an all-American Cartridge in Remington's flagship model 700. 

The 350 Remington Magnum is a cartridge that's kind of been lost to obscurity, and it was just sheer dumb luck I got my hands on one, but I'm glad I did. Sure, it's no fun to shoot from the bench since it kicks like a mule, but that is something you got to do if you're going to hunt with it. Though I haven't been hunting with it since that December, I'm sure I'll take it out someday. Right now I'm on a mission to hunt with every rifle in my safe and I haven't made it back around again, but I will. It's just too good a cartridge settled into the one of the best rifle designs to never take it out hunting again--as long as it's a nice, dry, and sunny day!

Now I just have to find a Classic in 6.5X55mm Swedish Mauser
that I can actually afford.