Redneck -
1. Please use a mix of upper and lower-case letters, as it makes your posts much easier to read. (All lower-case is easier than all upper-case if you must make them all the same.) Also, all upper-case is considered to be SHOUTING.
2. There are some that will regard your interest in the .338 RUM as evidence of feelings of insecurity, and question your manhood as a result. A POX ON THEM! I have been interested in getting a .338 Win Mag or .375 H&H for several years and the RUM flavors have grabbed my attention, too. They look like excellent cartridges, but in all honesty I doubt ther is anything they will do that I couldn't do equally well with the Win Mag or H&H -- after 350 yards I just don' thave much interest in pulling the trigger.
3. You might want to research the recoil of the .338 RUM. (If you don' have a program that will calculate it, go to
www.huntingnut.com and download "Point Blank", a FREE ballistic calculator. I was at the range shortly after the .375 RUM came out and the fellow two stalls down at the range was shooting one. He had to have a muzzle brake installed to make the thing shootable - too much recoil in its original state. The brake, of course, made me wish I was in another county.
4. What the heck, curiousity got the better of me -- here's a comparison of the .338 Win Mag and .338 RUM using max loads for a 230g Nosler CT Failsafe from Nosler's 5th Edition:
Cartridge .338 Win Mag .338 RUM
Bullet 230g CT Failsafe 230g CT Failsafe
Powder 71.5g IMR 4350 98.0g RL25
Velocity 2882fps 3227fps
Recoil 37.2 foot-pounds 53.9 foot-pounds
Zero Range 244 yards 270 yards
MPBR (6" dia.) 286 yards 317 yards
Range at -10" 350 yards 390 yards
As you can see, the RUM offers a very useful extension in range, but at a heavy price in recoil. Most hunters will never need the extra range, and of those that do, most shouldn't attempt the shot, IMHO.
