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The .264 Winchester Magnum is a belted, bottlenecked rifle cartridge. Except for the .244 H&H Magnum and .257 Weatherby Magnum, it is the smallest caliber factory cartridge derived from the Holland & Holland belted magnum case. It was introduced in the late 1950s and early 1960s with the .338 Winchester Magnum and the .458 Winchester Magnum as one of a family of short-cased
belted magnum The term belted magnum or belted case refers to any cartridge, but generally a rifle cartridge, with a shell casing that has a pronounced "belt" around its base that continues past the extractor groove. This design originated with the British ...
cartridges developed by
Winchester Winchester (, ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city in Hampshire, England. The city lies at the heart of the wider City of Winchester, a local government Districts of England, district, at the western end of the South Downs N ...
based on the .375 Holland & Holland parent case. It was officially introduced to the public by
Winchester Winchester (, ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city in Hampshire, England. The city lies at the heart of the wider City of Winchester, a local government Districts of England, district, at the western end of the South Downs N ...
in 1959. After many years of dwindling use it began enjoying a mild resurgence in popularity in the mid-2000s among long range rifle enthusiasts and reloaders due to the high ballistic coefficient of the heavier 6.5mm bullets and increasing popularity of cartridges such as
6.5mm Creedmoor The 6.5mm Creedmoor designated as 6.5 Creedmoor by SAAMI, and as 6,5 Creedmoor by the C.I.P. is a centerfire rifle cartridge introduced by Hornady in 2007. It was developed by Hornady senior ballistics scientist Dave Emary in partnership with D ...
, .260 Remington,
6.5 Grendel The 6.5mm Grendel (6.5×38mm) is an intermediate cartridge jointly designed by British-American armorer Bill Alexander, competitive shooter Arne Brennan (of Houston, Texas) and Lapua ballistician Janne Pohjoispää, as a low-recoil, high- precisi ...
, benchrest and
wildcat cartridge A wildcat cartridge, often shortened to wildcat, is a custom-made cartridge (weaponry), cartridge for which ammunition and/or firearms are not mass-produced. These cartridges are often created as experimental variants to optimize a certain ballis ...
s in 6.5mm.


Design & specifications

Winchester had been manufacturing the shortened Holland & Holland cases under a contract for
Weatherby Weatherby, Inc. is an American gun manufacturer founded in 1945 by Roy Weatherby. The company is best known for its high-powered magnum cartridges, such as the .257 Weatherby Magnum, .270 Weatherby Magnum, .300 Weatherby Magnum, .340 Weatherby ...
for use in their .257 Weatherby Magnum, .270 Weatherby Magnum and
7mm Weatherby Magnum The 7mm Weatherby Magnum is a powerful 7mm rifle cartridge offered by the Weatherby firearms company in their Mark V rifles. The cartridge was one of the first cartridges offered by the Weatherby company. History It was developed among the ...
cartridges. The Weatherby cases had been based on Winchester's .30 Super cartridge. This new series of shortened Holland & Holland cases was based on the .375 Holland & Holland case. The advantages of the shortened case were twofold: the cartridge could function through the standard length rifle action as used by the popular
.30-06 Springfield The .30-06 Springfield cartridge (pronounced "thirty- aught-six" ), 7.62×63mm in metric notation, and called the .30 Gov't '06 by Winchester, was introduced to the United States Army in 1906 and later standardized; it remained in military us ...
and .270 Winchester. It was also close to the efficiency limitations of powders available at the time given the case capacity of the cartridge. The longer, full length .375 H&H case would not have resulted in a great performance improvement due to the powders available at that time. It was similar to the reasoning behind the shortened cases used by Weatherby as DuPont's IMR 4350 was the slowest burning powder available then. The .264 Winchester Magnum is a cartridge which was standardized by
SAAMI The Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers' Institute (SAAMI, pronounced "Sammy") is an association of American manufacturers of firearms, ammunition, and components. SAAMI is an accredited standards developer that publishes several A ...
, which published recommended specifications for the cartridge. SAAMI recommends a six groove barrel with a rate of twist of one revolution in , a bore diameter of and a groove diameter of with each groove having a width of . The recommended maximum pressure for the cartridge (piezo) is .


Performance

The .264 Winchester Magnum gained a reputation as a very flat shooting cartridge. When introduced, it was first chambered in the Winchester Model 70 Westerner rifle, which was intended for longer range shooting more common in the Western United States. At present Remington, Winchester, HSM, and DoubleTap Ammunition produce ammunition for this cartridge. Manufacturers offer a bullet at . This ammunition has a maximum point blank range of when sighted in at . Some ammunition offers premium Nosler Partition and Accubond bullets driven at and through a barrel. While readily available factory ammunition for the cartridge is for the most part fairly basic, handloaders can gain a step up in performance with bullets with better ballistic coefficients and weights to extend the performance of the cartridge. For this reason, this cartridge is better suited for shooters who are willing to make their own ammunition rather than those who purchase over the counter ammunition.


Reception

The .264 Winchester Magnum main competition comes from the various 7mm cartridges such as the
7mm Remington Magnum The 7mm Remington Magnum rifle cartridge was introduced as a commercially available round in 1962, along with the new Remington Model 700 bolt-action rifle. It is a member of the belted magnum family that is directly derived from the venerable . ...
,
7mm Weatherby Magnum The 7mm Weatherby Magnum is a powerful 7mm rifle cartridge offered by the Weatherby firearms company in their Mark V rifles. The cartridge was one of the first cartridges offered by the Weatherby company. History It was developed among the ...
, the .270 Winchester Short Magnum, .270 Weatherby Magnum, 6.5mm Remington Magnum and the .257 Weatherby Magnum cartridges in North America and the cartridges such as the
6.5×68mm The 6.5×68mm rebated rim bottlenecked centerfire rifle cartridge (also known as the 6.5×68mm RWS, 6.5×68mm Schüler, or the 6.5×68mm Von Hofe Express) and its sister cartridge the 8×68mm S were developed in the 1930s by August Schüler from ...
in Europe. Due to the over crowded nature of the market in which the cartridge competes, popularity has been on the wane. In particular, the 7mm Remington Magnum release in 1962 led to the cartridge's poor reception by the shooting public. The 7mm Remington Magnum shoots almost as flat as the .264 Winchester Magnum but launches a larger diameter, heavier bullet generating more energy than the .264 Winchester Magnum. Furthermore, the 7mm Remington Magnum benefits from a vast range of compatible bullets due in large part to the popularity of the 7mm caliber while the .264 was something of an oddity and a rather new caliber in North America. Ballistically it is almost identical to the 6.5×68mm (also known incorrectly as the 6.5×68 RWS, 6.5×68 Schüler or the 6.5×68 Express Vom Hofe) and the 6.5×63 Messner Magnum. The .264 Winchester Magnum is an excellent, potentially accurate, very flat-shooting cartridge capable of taking any game in the lower 48 US states, and one of the most powerful of all cartridges. When loaded with bullets at a
muzzle velocity Muzzle velocity is the speed of a projectile (bullet, pellet, slug, ball/ shots or shell) with respect to the muzzle at the moment it leaves the end of a gun's barrel (i.e. the muzzle). Firearm muzzle velocities range from approximately t ...
of it is an adequate round for deer out to beyond provided that the hunter is capable of such longer shots.


Background

The .264 Win. Mag., like many magnum rounds, can wear out barrel throats more rapidly than lower pressure and lower velocity non-magnum cartridges, especially when fired rapidly, which heats up the steel and hastens throat erosion. Throat erosion is greater in higher
chamber pressure Within firearms, chamber pressure is the pressure exerted by a cartridge case's outside walls on the inside of a firearm's chamber when the cartridge is fired. The SI unit for chamber pressure is the megapascal (MPa), while the American SAAMI uses ...
overbore Overbore cartridges are those with a relatively large case volume or case capacity, coupled with a relatively small diameter bullet. The case volume or case capacity and barrel bore area can be mathematically related to obtain a case volume to bore ...
cartridges. This was particularly true in the 1950s to early 1960s, with the
chrome moly 41xx steel is a family of SAE steel grades, as specified by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE). Alloying elements include chromium and molybdenum, and as a result these materials are often informally referred to as chromoly steel (common va ...
steels almost universally used for barrels then. But recent advances with stainless steel barrels, especially with
cryogenic treatment A cryogenic treatment is the process of treating workpieces to cryogenic temperatures (typically around -300 °F / -184 °C, or as low as ) in order to remove residual stresses and improve wear resistance in steels and other metal alloys ...
, have extended barrel life considerably with the .264 Win. Mag. and many other cartridges. While very few production line riflemakers currently offer the .264 Win. Mag. as a factory chambering, the caliber remains popular with some enthusiasts using custom built rifles and handloading their own ammunition, as an internet search shows. As of 2018 and 2019, Winchester is once again producing its M70 bolt-action rifle in .264 Winchester Magnum. The introduction of Remington's 7 mm Magnum in 1962 almost immediately eclipsed the .264 Win. Mag., even though the 264 Win. Mag. uses an identical brass cartridge case (the neck diameter of either cartridge case can easily be modified to accept the others' bullets by the handloader), it never fully recovered from the competition of the slightly larger-bore cartridge.2002, ''Lyman's Reloading Handbook, 48th Edition''.264 Winchester Magnum info and loading data
from Accurate Powder
The fact that the 7 mm Rem. Mag. thoroughly eclipsed its popularity has been attributed to many causes, the premature "burning out" of barrels as compared to the Remington cartridge often cited. More likely is the fact that hunters had more confidence in the game-getting ability of heavier 7 mm (.284") 150 to 175 grain spitzer-shaped projectiles on big game, as compared to 140 grains being the upper end of pointed .264 bullets. Conversely, Winchester marketed the .264 as a long range, combination varmint and deer round, although suited for harvesting elk or moose. Unfortunately, the recoil it generates, plus the expense of the sheer quantity of ammo that may be used to shoot pests at long range (compared to pure varmint cartridges like the .222 Remington and the .220 Swift, or the smaller varmint / deer rounds, like the .243 Winchester) inhibited its popularity further. The result was more sportsmen opting for the bigger Remington 7 mm round because it was seen as more effective on a wider variety of big game; rather than a compromise round that could be used for varmints, worked well on whitetail and mule deer, but was borderline for the largest North American big game when the need arose. In Europe, two of the .264 Win. Mag.'s champions were George Swenson of John Wilkes gunmakers, London, and David Lloyd of Northampton, England. Lloyd built a number of his deluxe
Lloyd rifle The Lloyd Rifle was the 1950s brainchild of English deer-stalker, rifleman, metallurgist and engineer David Llewellyn Lloyd. His objective was to create a high-quality, scope-sighted, magazine-fed sporting rifle capable of dependably high acc ...
s in .264 Win Mag, mainly for sportsmen seeking a cartridge that would give high velocity performance with bullets heavier than the 100 grains fired by the .244 H&H Magnum.


See also

*
List of rifle cartridges List of rifle cartridges, by primer type, Caliber, calibre and name. File:Cartridge Sample 2.jpg, 350px, From left to right: 1 .17 Hornady Mach 2, 2 .17 Hornady Magnum Rimfire, 3 .22 Long Rifle, 4 .22 Winchester Magnum Rimfire, 5 .17/23 SMc, 6 5mm ...
*
6 mm caliber This is a list of firearm cartridges which have bullets of a caliber between and . *''Length'' refers to the cartridge case Case or CASE may refer to: Instances * Instantiation (disambiguation), a realization of a concept, theme, or design * ...
*
7 mm caliber This is a list of firearm cartridges which have bullets in the caliber In guns, particularly firearms, but not #As a measurement of length, artillery, where a different definition may apply, caliber (or calibre; sometimes abbreviated a ...


References


The Westerner: .264 Winchester Magnum by Chuck Hawks




{{DEFAULTSORT:264 Winchester Magnum Pistol and rifle cartridges Winchester Magnum rifle cartridges