he 7mm family portrait: (left to right) 7mm-08 Rem, 7mm Mauser, .284 Win, .280 Rem, 7mm SAUM, 7.21 Lazzeroni Tomahawk, 7mm WSM, 7mm Rem Mag, 7mm Wby Mag, 7mm Dakota, 7mm STW, 7mm Ultra Mag and 7.21 Lazzeroni Firebird.

I'm sure that in 1892 when Peter Paul Mauser was putting the finishing touches on a 7mm cartridge he had just designed, little did he know he was launching what would prove to be the most popular game caliber in the history of smokeless powder.

One 7mm that enjoyed a certain degree of popularity in the '50s was the 7x61 Sharpe & Hart (left) and in the 1960s, the .284 Win.

Here in the states the 7mm bore will in all probability remain a distant second in popularity to the .30 caliber, but when you consider the advantages the .30 has had, it's pretty impressive how popular the 7mm has become in such a relatively short span of time. After all, the .30 was the official caliber of the U.S. military from 1892 to 1967, first in the form of the .30-40 Krag, followed by the .30-06 and then the .308 Win. (7.62 NATO). Then there's the little matter of there being some 10 million Winchester Model 94 and Marlin lever-action rifles chambered in .30 WCF. It's no wonder, then, that no matter how you track it--through sales of loading dies, component bullets, loaded ammunition or unprimed brass--.30 will always come up number one simply because there are so many of them out there. New-gun sales figures, however, are something else again, for the 7mm competes quite successfully with the .30 in that category.

Anyway, the 7mm as a smokeless-powder caliber was launched when Spain adopted the 7mm Mauser as its martial cartridge in 1893, first in a limited number of Mauser's Model of 1892, then in serious quantities in the Model '93. The cartridge is known by at least four names: Spanish Mauser, 7mm Mauser, 7x57 and in England as the .275 Rigby. It was eventually adopted by the armies of Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Serbia, China, Persia, Transvaal and the Orange Free State.

There's nothing inherently superior ballistically in a 7mm bullet, but it just works out that in the most popular game weights, it has a remarkably high ballistic coefficient. Left to right: The 140-grain Nosler Ballistic Tip is rated at .485, the 150-grain Swift Scirocco at .515, the 154-grain Hornady SST at .530, the 160-grain Nosler AccuBond at .531, the 162-grain Hornady SPBT at .514 and the 162-grain Hornady SST/InterBond at .550.

The first American company to chamber for the 7mm Mauser was Remington in its Model 1897 Rolling Block Military Carbine, the entire production of which went to the Mexican government. The following year, though, the chambering was offered in the No. 5 Sporting & Target Rifle version of the Rolling Block, along with the .30-30 Win. and .30-40 Krag. That same year the 7mm chambering was also added to the five-shot Remington-Lee bolt action rifle. In either case, relatively few 7mm Mauser rifles found themselves in the hands of America's hunters and shooters.

The story here stayed pretty much the same through the 1920s, '30s and '40s--Remington only offered the 7mm in its '17 Enfield-based Model 30 bolt-action rifle and Winchester in its Model 54 (and later in the Model 70). All together, though, it was a mere drop in the bucket; few other than handloading rifle cranks were even aware of the 7mm's existence.

Prior to the arrival of the .280 Rem in 1957, these three were the major players in the 7mm game (left to right): 7mm Mauser (7x57), 7x61 Sharpe & Hart and 7mm Weatherby Magnum.

The only other 7mm cartridges that had any presence whatsoever on these shores were the 7x64 Brenneke and the 7x61 Sharpe & Hart, for which Norma of Sweden was the main source of ammunition--also, the 7mm Weatherby Magnum, which goes back to the mid-'40s. But again, we're talking a tiny percentage of avante garde hunters handloading for custom-built rifles. As a caliber, the 7mm was still wallowing in obscurity as late as the 1950s.

That all started to change, however, in 1957 when Remington introduced its .280, the first commercial 7mm (.284) cartridge from a major American arms company. The .280's sole raison d'etre was to compete with the phenomenally popular .270 Win. With the 20/20 hindsight that time bestows, it can be said that Remington made a mistake by developing the .280 for use in the semiauto Model 740 because it had to be loaded to pressures levels below those used for the .270 Win., which was designed strictly for bolt guns. Once that decision had been made and there were rifles and ammo in the hands of consumers, there was no turning back.