[alyeska338]

Loader,
I think the belt came from new cartridges being necked up and down off of cartridges that were introduced with minimal or no shoulders. Like the discussion about the 8mm Mag, it is a derivative of the 375 H&H which, at one time, thought to really need a belt. The Winchester Mag cases are derivatives of the 458, which has no shoulder. Instead of coming up with an entirely new brass line, these were just necked down.

I do understand why some folks don't like belts, but if you were the manufacturer, would you gamble on an entirely new setup or just modify an existing one? It's much cheaper and there is no guarantee of success. The 275 H&H is a cartridge that should have caught on, but never did. It has never been popular here, and is very rarily seen in Europe. Yet it has the same factory ballistics as the 7mm Rem Mag, and was introduced in 1912! Part of the failure was the bullets were designed for the 7mm Mauser and couldn't handle the speeds of the H&H in the early twentieth century when striking large animals at close range. Should H&H have gambled on coming up with an entirely new line of brass for it? Would it have made any difference to Winchester if they had used a beltless case for the 264 Winchester Mag?

The advantages of a beltless are known, but belted cases aren't all bad. For hunting purposes and the casual shooter, there really isn't a difference to worry about. The beltless large volume cases are the "in" thing now, and they do have their advantages, but from a manufacturer's standpoint, I can't criticize them for taking a minimal risk and introducing the 338, 7mm, 300 series of belted mags. Like wildcatters who didn't want to suffer the expense of buying 404 Jeffery cases and wildcatting, the manufacturers already have the belted case at their disposal, with minimal risk, complete safety, and like performance.

 

[alyeska338]

I had an 8mm Mag for awhile when Remington was offering it as a factory rifle. The recoil didn't seem any greater than my 338, and the cartridge seemed to duplicate the results of the 338. There were two problems with rifle and chambering as far as I could see. One the BDL and custom shop issued stocks were very slim in the wrist and the round punished them very bad. The custom shop stock had reinforcing bolts, but the stock's wrist was way to slim to have those bolts place that far rearward. I split 3 custom shop stocks shooting factory loaded 220 grain Core-Lokts. I always checked to see if the screws were tight, bore was clean and unobstructed, but I never made entirely through that one box of loads.

Second was that during Remington's factory run of chambering, there were no premium bullets being made for it. It was often repeated that "the 8 Mag would never be a popular cartridge until Nosler introduced a Partition for it and Nosler would not offer a Partition for it until it was a popular cartridge."

Yes, it is a fine round. Will it do anything the 338 won't? Not in the field of any noticeable difference. The 338 has its niche in the medium bore lineup and the 8 Mag duplicates it's performance. The 700 stock design is pretty poor for rifles with that kind of recoil and Remington refused to do anything about it. Thus, my long standing feud with Remington. I ended up with a rifle from their custom shop that I couldn't shoot because their stock wouldn't stay together. After about 2 years of fighting with them about it, I traded for a No.1 in 338 and am perfectly content with the trade. Remington's 8 Mag was a great round, but that was a sorry rifle.