RELOADING
The .264 Winchester Magnum
This sizzlin' 6.5 never fulfilled its commercial promise, which is a pity.
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| BARNES: | 100 gr., 120 gr., 130., 140 gr. |
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| HORNADY: | 95 gr., 100 gr., 129 gr., 140 gr., 160 gr., |
| NOSLER: | 100 gr., 120 gr., 125 gr., 140 gr. |
.264 Winchester Magnum (bullet availability)
If there's a standard cartridge for western hunting, it has to be Remington's 7mm Magnum. The .30-06 has killed more game, but it's been around 60 years longer. The .270 has also piled up venison, but when it was announced in 1925, states that now host thousands of elk hunters had no elk seasons.
Remington's was hardly the first 7mm magnum; it trailed by 50 years the .275 Holland & Holland, loaded for some time in the U.S. by Western Cartridge Company. In 1944 Roy Weatherby brought out his 7mm Weatherby Magnum, a more powerful round but available only in Weatherby rifles.
What could have been the stiffest challenge to Remington's 7mm, however, was the .264 Winchester Magnum, chambered in the Model 70 beginning in 1959, four years before the Big 7 appeared. It was third in Olin's line of short belted magnums. Like the .458 and .338 magnums, which preceded it in 1956 and 1958, the .264 is based on the .375 H&H case shortened to 2.5 inches for use in .30-06-length actions. The .532-diameter head is shared by most belted magnums; the 25-degree shoulder is almost as common.
The .264 made its debut in a 26-inch-barreled Model 70 that Winchester dubbed the Westerner. Initially, catalogs listed 140-grain Power Point bullets at 3,200 fps, 100-grain softpoints at 3,700. These figures were later revised down, though it is no trick for even cautious handloaders to match original .264 Magnum performance.
The .264's problem was that, while Jack O'Connor trumpeted the virtues of the .270 and Warren Page touted 7mm wildcats, nobody with a pulpit had much good to say about a belted 6.5. Soon after its introduction, the .264 was criticized for its muzzle blast and a tendency to eat throats. Both barbs were justified, but the blast from 24-inch-barreled 7mm magnums, which later sold like hotcakes, is equally unnerving. The throat in any rifle that chambers big cases and delivers scorching bullet speeds gets a pounding--no more so from a hot 6.5.
Another of the .264's shortcomings was limited bullet selection. Because 6.5mm cartridges have long struggled for acceptance stateside, .264 bullets do not abound. Oddly, shooters hadn't found component choice a problem afflicting the .270. But when the .270 was getting traction, shooters hadn't been spoiled by broad selections of bullets in other diameters, and handloading hadn't reached the popularity it enjoyed in the 1950s.
Not only were there few .264 bullets available; tradition had it that elk required heavier missiles than the 140-grain spitzers at the top of the 6.5mm weight range. The kinetic energy of original factory-loaded 140-grain .264 Magnum softpoints matches that of 175-grain bullets in 7mm magnum ammo--and exceeds what elk hunters were getting with 130-grain .270 bullets, which still knock off elk with monotonous regularity. But hunters asked why, if the case had such great capacity, some of that extra fuel wasn't put to use behind heavier bullets. Winchester's marketing team didn't field this question.
Unlike Remington, which hawked the 7mm magnum as a cartridge for all-around western hunting, including elk, Winchester implied that the .264 was the ultimate deer round, with lighter bullets for coyotes and lesser game. But hunters didn't want a fire-breathing magnum to knock off coyotes; they wanted a rifle that would put the skids under elk at long range. Remington obliged, cleverly noting that its Big 7 was more civil in recoil than a .30 magnum, though it hit harder than a .30-06.
Winchester could have played this card. Instead it emphasized the .264's violence. One of the first published ad blurbs, below an end-on view of the muzzle, read, "It makes a helluva noise and packs a helluva wallop."
I can't say when the 100-grain load was dropped, but nobody mourned it. In the .264 rifles I've owned, it never shot as accurately as 140-grain bullets. Now Winchester and Remington offer only 140-grain factory loads (Power-Points and Core-Lokts). Listed velocity is an anemic 3,030 fps--30 fps slower than standard gate speed for a 130-grain .270 bullet. At 400 yards the two are neck-and-neck. Polymer-tip bullets like the Swift Scirocco and Remington AccuTip afford the .270 a 150-fps edge at 400. A 140-grain Light Magnum load from Hornady gives the .270 a 230-fps advantage and 325 more ft-lbs of punch.
So why buy a .264? Few hunters have found a reason. Still, my handloading shows this cartridge can easily outperform the .270 and, with bullets up to 140 grains, will beat the 7mm Rem. Mag. downrange. Bullet selection has improved lately. Barnes, Berger, Hornady, Lapua, Norma, Nosler, Remington, Sierra, Speer, Swift and Woodleigh all make .264 bullets of different styles ranging from 85 to 160 grains--this according to Midway, which carries them all. You need only one good load.
WARNING: The loads shown here are safe only in the guns for which they were developed. Neither the author nor InterMedia Outdoors assumes any liability for accidents or injury resulting from the use or misuse of this data.
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