About 30 minutes after Winchester launched the 7.62x51mm NATO on the shooting world as the .308 Winchester, cartridge creators were busily necking the case up and down to other calibers. Some of the rounds thus created, such as the .243 Winchester, are ever popular with steady sales to this day. Some, such as the .358 Winchester, are not.

Available bullets for the .358 Winchester include (from left): the 200-grain Hornady RN and SP, Speer 220-grain FP, 225-grain Nosler Partition, Speer 250-grain Hot-Cor SP.

The .358 was hatched in 1955 and was housed in the equally new Model 88 lever action. The rifle/cartridge combo was intended to replace the .348 Winchester and the soon-to-be-cashiered Model 71 lever gun. While the ballistics of the .358 accomplished its goal, the cartridge sold like ice-cream in the Arctic and soon tottered into obscurity. This is too bad, because the .358 is a perfectly wonderful load. With modern propellants and the high-tech bullets of today, it will hold its own on deer and elk at reasonable ranges.

The .358 debuted with two factory loads, a 200-grainer listed at 2,520 fps and a 250-grain heavyweight at 2,250 fps. Today Winchester lists one load, a 200-grain Silvertip at 2,490 fps, but good luck finding any. And until recently, .358 rifles were scarce, too.

There is good news on that score as well. Browning now offers two versions of its slick BLR lever gun in .358, both with 20-inch barrels. Bolt-action fans of the .358 can dote on Ruger's new M-77 Hawkeye, also in two models. The standard walnut-stocked, blued version has a 22-inch barrel, and the Frontier Stainless FRTG version has a laminated stock and a 16 1/2-inch barrel. All this cannot but help a fine old cartridge.

My test gun is a 1975-vintage Ruger Model 77R with a 22-inch barrel (from a limited run of about 500 rifles made in 1975). While Ruger collectors may cringe, it was made to be shot, so shoot it I did, and it delivered respectable ballistics and accuracy. Groups ran in the 1 1?4- to 1 1/2-inch range. A 4X Leupold scope provided the sighting arrangement.

.358 WINCHESTER LOAD DATA
Bullet	Bullet Weight (gr.)	Powder	Primer	Case	Charge Weight (grs.)	Velocity (fps)
Speer FN	180	XMR-2015	Rem.-Peters 9.5	Winchester	46.0	2,620
Speer FN	180	Benchmark	Rem.-Peters 9.5	Winchester	48.0	2,550
Hornady RN	200	H-332	Win. LargeRifle	Winchester	47.0	2,550
Hornady SP	200	H-332	Rem.-Peters 9.5	Winchester	44.0	2,540
Hornady SP	200	H-4895	Rem.-Peters 9.5	Winchester	48.0	2,470
Speer FP	220	H-Benchmark	Rem.-Peters 9.5	Winchester	46.0	2,360
Sierra BT	225	H-Benchmark	Rem.-Peters 9.5	Winchester	46.0	2,380
Nosler Partition	225	Reloder 15	Rem.-Peters 9.5	Winchester	47.0	2,360
Nosler Partition	225	H-Benchmark	Rem.-Peters 9.5	Winchester	46.0	2,470
Speer SP	250	H-322	Rem.-Peters 9.5	Winchester	44.0	2,330
Speer SP	250	Accurate-2520	Rem.-Peters 9.5	Winchester	47.5	2,230
Speer SP	250	XMR-2495	Rem.-Peters 9.5	Winchester	44.0	2,310
All figures from a 22-inch barrel. Abbreviations: SP: soft point, FP: flat point, FN: flat nose, RN: roundnose, BT: boat-tail

Reloading the .358 presents no particular problem, after, that is, you have rounded up some empty cases. Winchester lists these, too, but as "seasonal components." This basically means that Big Red makes them only about once a year (if then), so if you find 'em and need 'em, buy 'em. Absent the factory product, one can easily neck up .308 Winchester brass into perfectly usable cases. The tapered expander plug in the RCBS dies I used did this in one easy pass. (I was lucky enough to find a fresh supply of new cases for these G&A tests.)

I used standard primers with complete success in all loads except one. Remington 9.5 M magnum primers reduced the standard deviations (SD) considerably with Accurate-2520 spherical powder. Ballistic uniformity is an important (but not the only important) component in accuracy. The loads shown in the accuracy table had SDs of 21 or less, and many were in the single digits. Medium-burning-rate powders are best suited for the .358's small case, and many of the most useful ones were developed for the benchrest crowd.