Thoughts on the status of the .264 Win Mag

[dickydalton]

I've had this 1903-A3 with JAL 26" barrel custom since 1974.

 

[SwampWolf]

I was 15 years old when Winchester introduced the .264 Winchester Magnum in 1958. Though I then lived in urban Ohio, where you never saw antelopes playing and reindeer only at Christmas time, I decided that this belted Magnum was the "deer" cartridge I would first get when I finally "came of age". At the time, most of the gun articles available to me were found in the back issues of magazines like Outdoor Life and Field & Stream, written by scribes like Jack O'Connor and Warren Page that I got from my dad's barbershop.

As others have mentioned, when it first made its appearance to the hunting public, the new .264 was shoehorned between the revered, time-tested .270 Winchester and the latest ".280" caliber, the 7mm Remington Magnum. Many writers of the time (especially O'Connor) were making the arguments that, practically speaking, the .264 needed more recoil and noise, and greater chamber pressure, while sacrificing bore-life of the 2" longer barrel to get the same results as the old .270; while not achieving the "better" ballistic performance the new 7mm Magnum offered.

The military, college, marriage, children and a career passed me by in a flash, it seems, but I never did get around to obtaining that dream rifle of my youth. However, even today, no sporting rifle/cartridge combination brings more chutz-pah and "coolness" factors to the field for me than a Winchester Model 70 "Westerner", chambered in .264 Magnum.

 

[DM~]

I was 23 when I got a .264 Win. Mag., I shot my first brown bear with it, that year.

DM

 

[citizenconn]

When Winchester announced their new .264 Win Mag it was billed as "The Westerner" it set my schooboy imagination aflame with visions of hunting the rolling plains where buffalo once roamed and sriking far distant game like bolts of thunder. And its dizzing ballistics placed it second only to my soaring esteme for the .257 Weatherby. I vowed to have one, but first there were mundane interruptions such as finishing grammer school, then college and dealing with other impediments. Along the way I discovered that despite my enchantment of the .264 WM it did not strike the marketplace like a blazing star, and never became a darling of gun writers. Instead it seems to have earned, and still retains, a steady and loyal following of hunters who know what it can do and know how to use it. Such as southern "beanfield" hunters who dote on the .264 WM and were gladdend when Remington offered it in their M-700 Sendaro. I can thank of no better mainstream caliber for long shoots at mule deer and pronghorn, which is what folks at Winchester had in mind when they named their new baby the Westener. I have sometimes given some thought to take this M-70 to Africa for plains game, but haven't yet. It was restocked by Al Bieson some 35 years ago, with a nice piece of wood and one of his fantastic checkering designs.View attachment 1077273 View attachment 1077274 View attachment 1077275 View attachment 1077276 View attachment 1077277

That's a beautiful rifle.