Straight to the Point with Straight-Wall Cartridges

I hear it all the time: “What’s the story with this new .360 Buckhammer or the .350 Legend? Why not just bring back the .35 Remington?” Or, “Why bother with the .450 Bushmaster? There’s nothing wrong with my .45-70.” Such comments usually come from shooters of my generation. There are a lot of us old-timers out there, and we’re still active. We remember great old cartridges, and we still have rifles in classic chamberings. We see new stuff come down the pike and scratch our heads. It seems like manufacturers are trying to fix something that isn’t broken.

There may be some truth in this. Manufacturers introduce new products because they want people to buy. Ideally, they have some handle on their buying public. With new cartridges, they probably aren’t targeting us geezers because older shooters like me have most of the firearms we need and aren’t as quick to embrace new stuff—especially when it seems duplicative of good old stuff.

This new straight-wall phenomenon started in 2014 when Michigan made rifles chambered to straight-wall cartridges legal for deer hunting in the massive Lower Peninsula, formerly a shotgun-only zone. Up until then, the .450 Bushmaster was an obscure cartridge designed to wring serious knockdown power out of the AR platform. Ruger did a run of bolt-action Americans in .450, and it was instantly swamped by orders from every gunshop in Michigan.

Straight-Wall Surge

Since then, the straight-wall surge has expanded. In five states, centerfire rifles chambered to straight-wall cartridges with limited power and range are now legal for deer in certain seasons and areas that were once shotgun-only. Winchester’s .350 Legend was the first cartridge specifically designed to meet all straight-wall criteria. Remington’s .360 Buckhammer was the second; and Winchester’s new .400 Legend is the third. I can’t predict if there will be more, but it’s an obvious trend. The .350 Legend was fantastically successful out of the starting gate. It is AR-compatible, and it was quickly offered in both modern sporting rifles and bolt actions, accompanied by a rapid proliferation of factory loads. Although a larger bolt face is required, the .400 Legend is AR-compatible as well.

The current straight-wall states are Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan and Ohio. Collectively, these five states have 5.6 million licensed hunters. Not all are deer hunters, but these five states are home to at least 25 percent of all licensed hunters in the United States. Enough of them have been shotgun-toting whitetail hunters—willing to trade in their slug guns for more accurate, more efficient centerfire rifles—to create a substantial new market. There are other shotgun-only states, and also many shotgun-only zones across the country.

The whole theory behind “shotgun-only” is projectile travel, which is a concern in areas characterized by small farms, villages and suburban sprawl. Shotgun projectiles and slug guns have improved dramatically, but their range, accuracy and efficiency still don’t compare with centerfire rifles. The intent with these new rounds is to limit range, and from an engineering standpoint, the quickest way to reduce velocity and thus range is to avoid the more efficient bottleneck case. The Illinois legislation to allow handguns and handgun cartridges for deer—largely due to the efforts of late gun writer Dick Metcalf—was the start of this movement. Many revolver cartridges are legal for deer. Some are marginal, but others are pretty darned good in longer barrels.

As far as adding rifle cartridges—again, the intent is to increase deer-killing efficiency without increasing range. However, the criteria are not consistent among the current five states. Among existing recent rifle cartridges, the .450 Bushmaster was almost alone in meeting Michigan’s criteria: .35 caliber minimum with a case length of 1.16 to 1.80 inches. The two Legends and the Buckhammer were designed from scratch to meet all straight-wall criteria in all five states.

The Golden Oldies

Introduced in 1906 and long a hard-hitting favorite for anchoring black bears and whitetails in the big Northern woods, the .35 Rem. is the cartridge most often compared against the .350 Legend or .360 Buckhammer. The .35 Rem. is a great cartridge, but it’s a bottleneck cartridge and therefore doesn’t meet straight-wall rules.

Most revolver cartridges above .35 caliber fill the bill. The .357 Mag. is often legal for deer in handguns, and it meets Michigan’s straight-wall criteria. While I think the .357 is underpowered for deer in short revolver barrels, it’s also been chambered in carbines for a long time. Like all cartridges, it gains velocity and energy in longer barrels, but it still isn’t a powerhouse. As loaded by Federal in its HammerDown line, you’ve got a 170-grain bullet at 1,610 fps for 978 ft.-lbs. of energy from a carbine-length barrel.

Going way back, if you have one of the million-plus .44-40 carbines still out there, you have a rifle that’s legal in most straight-wall areas. Velocity increases a bit in rifle-length barrels, but the .44-40 is slow, with a modest energy yield, so you’d better be close and place your shot well.

The .44 Rem. Mag., long chambered in various rifles and carbines, is an equally legal and more effective straight-wall choice. Flatter-shooting with higher energy yield than the .44-40, the .44 Mag. gains tremendous velocity in longer barrels. A standard 240-grain bullet clocks up to 1,800 fps from an 18-inch barrel. My 1894 Marlin .44 Mag. is accurate, and it’s a 200-yard deer rifle.

The .45 Colt is also straight-wall legal and has been chambered to various long guns. Ammunition is widely loaded, but the caution here is that a lot of it is underpowered and meant for Cowboy Action competition—and not suitable for big game.

Most obvious of all is the great old .45-70. Because of the resurgence of interest in big lever actions—such as the new Ruger-made Marlin guide guns—the 150-year-old .45-70 is one of our more popular centerfire rifle cartridges. However, its 2.1-inch case is too long for Michigan’s 1.8-inch case length limit, although it’s fine in the other straight-wall states.

In fact, it’s the Michigan case length rule that scotches most other existing straight-wall rifle cartridges. Obvious contenders would include .38-55, .375 Win., .405 Win. and .444 Marlin. As I understand it, these would be legal in some jurisdictions, but not in Michigan, because case lengths all exceed 1.8 inches. I hate to keep citing Michigan, but of the five straight-wall states, it has 2.2 million hunters and a huge straight-wall zone, thus the most buying power. If you’re like me, neither residing nor hunting in a straight-wall state, you probably couldn’t care less about this stuff. Dig your Marlin .35 Rem. or your .405 Win. out of the safe and go deer hunting.

New Kids on the Straight-Wall Block

Let’s get back to the new and relatively new kids on the straight-wall block. As a now-senior gun writer, I’ve been involved in almost every major cartridge introduction since 1980. The major exceptions are the two Legends. Hell, I had to look them up on the internet when I heard about them. In recent seasons, though, I’ve hunted with the .450 Bushmaster and both Legends, and I did have an early opportunity to use and write about the Buckhammer.

As I mentioned, the .450 Bushmaster has been around for a while. One of my Kansas neighbors was looking for a new rifle for his teenage son. Because of ammo availability, he bought a .450 Bushmaster. Kansas is generally not Bushmaster country, but my neighbor’s small, land-locked property is similar to what hunters in straight-wall states contend with. He wants to hammer his deer, get them down on his ground. Until the Bushmaster, he’d been using a .30-06, which is a big gun on whitetails. Their Bushmaster has proven a dramatically effective hammer.

It should be. It is generally loaded faster than the .45-70, and with lighter bullets it is similar in effect to the .45-70. I’ve used it for hogs and black bears, and it’s awesome. Its problem, especially in a light bolt action, is it thumps on both ends—producing too much recoil for a lot of folks, especially younger, smaller hunters.

The Bushmaster’s recoil is part of what led Winchester to develop the .350 Legend. Fitting all straight-wall criteria, it’s a cool little cartridge. I first saw it on my Kansas farm in an AR upper, and it was effective on our thick-woods deer. Later, I used it in a Mossberg Patriot on whitetails, hogs and one black bear.

Since it’s mild in recoil and report, I had no trouble with the .350 Legend, but I saw a couple of other hunters lose big hogs that appeared to be hit well. My take on the .350 Legend is that it is good for deer up close but marginal for larger game.

The .360 Buckhammer is slightly faster and is offered in a heavier 200-grain bullet. For those who use the .35 Rem. as a yardstick, the .350 Legend is slightly less powerful, the .360 Buckhammer slightly more powerful. From what I’ve seen, the Buckhammer also performed well on whitetails and hogs. The differences are not extreme, so I put both in roughly the same class—a very good class.

I haven’t had the chance to use the .400 Legend on game larger than deer, but this new straight-wall seems to provide an excellent in-between answer: more bullet weight and frontal area than the .350 Legend and .360 Buckhammer, with less recoil than the Bushmaster.

I’ve been shooting the .400 Legend in a seven-pound Savage bolt action with a 20-inch barrel. Recoil is considerably more than the .350 Legend and .360 Buckhammer. It’s not obnoxious, but it’s far less than the Bushmaster or the .45-70. On medium-size whitetails, bullet performance from the .400 Legend has been excellent, with through-and-through penetration. It offers a sound compromise for deer hunters who also hunt larger game now and then.

Right now, we have several good options for the straight-wall states, in three distinct power and recoil levels. All are equally good anywhere else; just don’t stretch them out. By design and intent, all the straight-walls are short-range cartridges. In a scoped rifle, all are easily effective to 200 yards but not a whole bunch more. You can’t wring much more out of them, and you shouldn’t try.

So far, I haven’t seen any of the new straight-walls to be out-of-the-box tack-drivers. Across the board, my averages run 1.5 to two m.o.a. That’s plenty of accuracy for 200-yard hunting, and it’s better than can be expected from shotguns with slugs. They may not be all that much better than some of our older cartridges, but they’re good at what they do.

What About the Obsolete Winchesters?

Being in my curmudgeonly years, and having a long memory, I can’t help but go back to that business about fixing something not broken. Honest now, how many of us remember the .401 Winchester Self-Loading? Chambered only in Winchester’s Model 1910 semiauto, the .401 WSL used a straight, semi-rimmed 1.6-inch case—propelling a 200-grain roundnose at a credible 2,135 fps and yielding 2,020 ft.-lbs. of energy.

Come to think of it, a similar comparison can be made between the .350 Legend and the .351 WSL, which was chambered in the Winchester Model 1907 semiauto. It has a 1.37-inch case, pushing a 180-grain bullet at 1,870 fps for 1,400 ft.-lbs. of energy or a 200-grain bullet at 1,850 fps for 1,370 ft.-lbs.

Both the .351 and .401 WSL are credible short-range deer cartridges and seem to fit all straight-wall cartridge criteria—as well as meeting the Michigan case-length parameters. So why did Winchester reinvent the wheel rather than updating its own old-timers? I can only speculate, but there are common-sense reasons.

The WSL cases were semi-rimmed and are not easily AR-compatible. Both have been obsolete for a generation and more, and their dimensions—including bullet diameters—don’t match any current cartridges. Their prior existence isn’t a bad mark on either Legend, just interesting trivia. And it proves the point that if you dig deep enough, there’s not much new under the rifle-cartridge sun.

---