The latest issue of Guns & Ammo has an article by Craig Boddington about the .264 Win Mag and the 8mm Remington Mag. The theme is that though orphan children of the sporting rifles world that never achieved major popularity, they're both great rounds for their intended purpose. He talked about his custom 8mm Rem Mag with a 28" barrel that achieved 3,000 with a 220 grain bullet. Very impressive, but who wants to carry aournd a broomstick of a rifle with a 28" barrel?
An interesting idea for an article, but very poorly written, superficial and dull. No load tables. Just a few photo's of his guns and a couple of anecdotes about how these personal favorites of his were, unfortunately, duds from a marketing perspective.
As I see it, the big problem with the .264 was that it was not that much better than the .270, but was handicapped by lighter bullets and lack of flexibility. The 7mm Rem Mag, that came a few years later, had much more flexibility than the .264 and continues to be a huge success.
The problem with the 8mm Rem Mag is that the .323" bore has always been unpopular, there were few premium bullets in that caliber in the 1970's, the market for medium bore magnums is limited, and it was a huge kicker that few people could shoot. I've had a couple of friends with 8mm Rem Mags and they were very disappointed with the poor accuracy and intimidated with the heavy recoil that they described as far more oppressive than with .300 magnums. They said the 8mm magnum shot like a 300 magnum with .375 H&H recoil. Jon Sundra, however, once wrote an article that described the 8mm Rem Magnum as the "ideal" elk rifle. In another article, written about a year later on another subject, he admitted he'd never killed an elk on any of his numerous guided hunts for them.
On his website, custom rifle maker and wildcatter Kenny Jarret said that in his experience, production tolerances on 8mm Remington barrels varied widely and produced poor accuracy for that reason. How interesting that Remington chose to introduce a revolutionary new magnum in historically disfavored bore diameter without the kind of premium components (i.e. bullets and uniformly produced barrels) that would be relied upon by people who would use such a highly specialized rifle. Here's what he said:
"The .323 Jarrett is the newest member of the Jarrett cartridge family. I guess we could say that this one was bred out of curiosity. After stripping countless Remington 8mm Mag. rifles, it was obvious something was wrong with them. A man never sells you his best coon dog, or lets you strip his best rifle just for a receiver. I began to investigate, and what I heard was, “Worst shooting rifle I’ve ever had, been trying loads for a year and haven’t got a good one yet!” I didn’t understand why, and decided to make one on our Jarrett case. Here we had a known process to make a good rifle, a known barrel quality and a perfect proven case. Well, we made one and broke it in. I guessed at a powder charge and loaded a 200 gr. Nosler Partition. The first group was a .620. I knew at that point we needed to investigate! The .323 is right between our .300 and .338 calibers so I hoped to get some good heavy bullet performance. I guess we just needed something new to play with! I suspect the barrel on the Remington 8mm Mag. was a tad big on the bore and groove, which created the ‘step-child syndrome’ for the 8mm Mag. If you want something different, it sure ain’t no slouch! For African plains game to North American elk, moose and bear, it is a great all around caliber. This cartridge does best with a 25” barrel."
Jarret claims 3,100 fps with the 220 grain bullet!
My view is that the 6.5mm and 8mm calibers are better in standard cartridges like the 6.5x55, .260 Rem or the 6.5x.284 and the 8x57, or 8mm/06. The .264 Magnum and 8mm Rem Magnums were a little too much of a good thing, although personally I have always liked the idea of an 8mm/.338 wildcat. Much less recoil than the .375 mag length 8mm Rem Mag, but still a good boost in performance over the humble 8x57 mm.
The 8mm with its .323" bullets provides larger bullet diameter than the more popular .308", but does this mean it kills materially better? Elmer Kieth hated the 30-06 and said that an optimally loaded 8x57 mm was a far better killer than the 30-06 and that conclusion suggests that the increased bore diameter does increase killing power with proper loads.
