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.338 Federal
Posted by CowlitzSteelie on Feb 25 2006
This is for you Wildcatters who love domestication....
Shooting Times/March2006 pg.32
The First Rifle Cartridge To Carry The Federal Name
by Layne Simpson
Federal Cartridge Co. (Dept. ST, 900 Ehlen Dr., Anoka, MN 55303; 800-322-2342; www.federalcartridge.com) has teames up with Sako (distributed by Beretta U.S.A. Corp., Dept. ST 17601 Beretta Dr., Accokeek, MD 20607; 800-636-3420; www.berettausa.com) to give big-game hunters a new cartridge called the .338 Federal. This is a historical event because it is the first centerfire rifle cartridge to wear the Federal name. Plus as you'll read in a few moments, it's great elk and mule deer medicine.
In taking a close look at what this new introduction is all about, I will start by tracing its family tree back to 1952, the year Winchester domesticated the 7.62x51mm NATO and renamed it the .308 Winchester. As always happens when a new cartridge is introduced commercially, wildcatters cried out with glee and began to madly neck the .308 case in all directions, and as sometimes happens with wildcat cartridges, that ammunition companies took serious looks at some of them. Winchester scored first in 1955 by bringing forward the .243 Winchester and .358 Winchester. Both were introduced in a couple of Winchester rifles, the Model 70 Featherweight and the Model 88 lever action. Responding as quickly as molasses flowing through a snowbank, Remington finally introduced its 7mm-08 in 1980 and then followed up with the .260 Remington in 1997. Both were perfect candidates for the short action of the Model Seven rifle.
The responsibility of keeping the remaining caliber slots in the .308 Winchester family of cartridges filled still continued to weigh heavily on the shoulders of wildcatters. Those chores were taken care of quite nicely by the .22 middlested, the .25 Souper, the .270-308, and the .338-308, or .33-08 as some of us also call it. Of those five, the .338-caliber cartridge continues to enjoy the most popularity among hunters. Pat Ryan of Redding recently told me that it is one of their more popular catridges in reloading die sales in the custom category, and now that Federal has made an honest cartridge of the old wildcat, I am sure Redding will shift dies for it to the standard-production category, which is good news because doing so will likely lower the price. The tapered expander button of the full length resizing die makes forming the case from .308 brass a snap, but I see no reason for doing it now that Federal is making brass with the proper head stamp.
I became interested in the .33-08 soon after reading an article on it written during the early 1970s by my friend Roy Smith. An avid hunter of elk and moose, Roy had rebarreled a Winchester Model 88 for the cartridge and was quite impressed by its performance on game. At the time I had a spare Remington Model 600 in .308 and decided to have it rebarreled to .33-08. After shooting a black bear, a few wild hogs, and several deer with that rifle, I gave it and its set of RCBS reloading dies to a friend in Wyoming. I have not heard from him in quite a while, but last time we talked the little .338-caliber rifle was still the only thing he was using to harvest his elk and mule deer each year. He had also used it to take moose and interior grizzly in Alaska. I am sure my old friend will be happy to learn that he now has the option of using Federal factory ammo in that rifle.
What The Round Offers
Federal plans to offer three bullets in this new .338-caliber cartridge: 180-grain Nosler AccuBond, 185-grain Barnes Triple-Shock X, and 210-grain Nosler Partition. Muzzle velocities have not been firmed up as I write this, but they should be somewhere in the neighborhood of 2825, 2750, and 2650 fps repectively. According to the Federal representative I spoke with, overall cartridge length will be 2.860 inches, because this is a bit longer than the 2.810 inches that is specified by SAAMI for the .308 Winchester, this may rule out its use in some of the short-action rifles made by other manufacturers. They also warn that the ammunition should not be fired in rifles chambered for the .338-308 wildcat. Federal has wisely chosen some of the best bullets available for its new cartridge, and I wouldn't hesitate to take on the biggest moose or elk in the woods either, but those bullets are expensive, and it will surely show in the price of ammo. Far more deer will be harvested with the .338 Federal than any other game, so I'd like to see it also available with a plain-vanilla deer bullet at a lower price. Federal and Speer are members of the same corporate family, so a likely candidate is the 200-grain softnose spitzer from that company. Even better (and most likely next year) would be a Fusion bullet weighing anywhere from 180 to 200 grains.
During my first elk hunt with the .338 Federal, I took mental notes on what I would write about. One of the decisions I made then and there was to exclude accuracy results simply because reporting that type of information derived from a rifle with an aftermarket barrel could be misleading to readers. I figured that was the fair and honest thing to do, not only for readers, but for Federal and Sako as well. This allows me to reveal to the world an interesting and quite useful cartridge at an early date and then later report on accuracy when a production rifle becomes available.
Due to a fair number of suitable bullets and powders available for it, the .338 Federal is an excellent candidate for handloading. I have been stuffing the wildcat version with powder and bullets for quite a long time, and if teh Sako rifle I had at my diposal had been standard production, I would have included more loads in my data chart. Instead, I chose to include just a sampling of loads fired in that rifle and delay further load development until an off the shelf rifle is in my hands.
I was father fond of this mild-mannered cartridge when it was a wildcat, and I like it even more now that Federal has taken it under its wing. When loaded with the lighter bullets it shoots as flat as the .308 Winchester, which makes it just as good a choice for use on deer. If truth be told, its larger bullet diameter makes it an even better buck thumper. Recoil is also about the same when both cartridges are loaded with bullets if comparable weights. Moving on up in game size to moose, elk, and exceptionally large black bears, the .338 Federal definitely has an edge over the .308 due to its larger caliber and its ability to shoot heavier bullets. I wouldn't hesitate to hunt elk and black bear with the .308, and have done that in the past, but when the game is bigger and heavier than deer, I'd really rather have the .338 Federal. In the hands of a good rifleman who knows how to shoot, it is a 300-yard big-game cartridge, yet it won't spoil a great deal of steaks and chops when used on deer at closer ranges where most game is taken.
Capable of delivering upwards of 1500 foot-pounds of energy at 300 long paces, the .338 Federal is best described as a light magnum-performance cartridge wrapped up in a nonmagnum package for hunters who don't like to be kicked into the next county.
Next: 338 BrownBear Feb 25 2006
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