Weatherby rifles

[RobDooley]

Have two weatherby rifles among others. I would love to buy another Weatherby rifle...don't need one...just want it. However, why would you buy one when it is impossible to find ammo. I found some 7mm wby mag ammo (140 grain Barnes TTSX) at Sportsman Warehouse in Murfreesboro. $89.99 a box. Are you kidding me. Anybody hunt with a Weatherby with factory ammo? Having any luck finding factory ammo? Thanks.

 

[Andy S.]

In my neck of the woods, it's always been hard to find. I suspect it's because most hunters realize $75-90 box of ammo is not required to kill a 150 lb deer. Most of the guys I know that own/owned a Weatherby have either sold the rifle due to availability/cost of commercially available ammo, or started reloading. With that said, I was in a small town hunting store in west TN this past weekend and they had a good selection of Weatherby ammo for Weatherby cartridges. Another option is to get a Weatherby rifle chambered in a more common standard round such as .270, .308 etc.

 

[fairchaser]

It certainly pays to invest in reloading equipment when ammo is as expensive and scarce as it is for weatherby ammo.

 

[RobDooley]

In my neck of the woods, it's always been hard to find. I suspect it's because most hunters realize $75-90 box of ammo is not required to kill a 150 lb deer. Most of the guys I know that own/owned a Weatherby have either sold the rifle due to availability/cost of commercially available ammo, or started reloading. With that said, I was in a small town hunting store in west TN this past weekend and they had a good selection of Weatherby ammo for Weatherby cartridges. Another option is to get a Weatherby rifle chambered in a more common standard round such as .270, .308 etc.

Very true. I've been hunting with my old reliable Browning 30.06 for years. I could not pass up the deal on the 7mm wby mag. Only shot four times and came with a leupold scope. I got it for a song. Maybe the cost of ammo is why...not really he included three boxes of weatherby 154 grain spire points. I guess I will sell or trade or it will become a safe queen. I want to hunt over crop fields with it in Hickman County...but I ain't paying $90.00 a box for ammo. I appreciate the response..and yours too "fairchaser". Sage advice.

 

[Tenntrapper]

Try buds gunshop online. In stock for less than 50.00 per box

 

[EastTNHunter]

It certainly pays to invest in reloading equipment when ammo is as expensive and scarce as it is for weatherby ammo.

This ^^^

 

[Hunter 257W]

I can't imagine owning a Weatherby chambered rifle and not loading my own ammo. The cost of the factory ammo is ridiculously high. Very few people could afford to shoot one enough to get good with it. Sighting in alone is going to cost a pile. If you load your own, they only extra cost is for the proprietary brass. 460 brass in my experience always develops tiny splits in the radius between neck and case body. It takes a number of shots to do so but you don't shoot the 460 a lot once you get done stacking up stuff to see how much of whatever it will shoot through. I don't recall having a case failure yet in my 257 Weatherby so case cost isn't that bad if life is long.

If I didn't load my own however, I'd still be using my 25-06. There is no way the 200-300 ft/sec velocity increase with the 257 Weatherby compared to a 25-06 is worth the double or triple ammo cost for factory loads in both.

I almost forgot about how much i shot my 460 when I 1st got it. I used the Hornady steel jacketed 500 grain solids a lot for a while. You could get them for about $22/100. But even that got expensive once i found out that they would penetrate incredible thicknesses of wood and other materials. Then i started loading a 500 grain cast bullet from the Lee mold actually made for the 45-70 since the bullet diameter was .457. I'd download them to something like the 458 Lott. I actually shot a good sized tree down by the barn one day by shooting nearly 30 of those into it. The great thing was that those bullets even with the gas check cost less than 3 cents each back then (1987). My shoulder would give out way before my wallet did. That same bullet now costs more like 6 cents each mainly due to the increase in gas check cost. Powder is something like $8 per 20 rounds. Primers about 75 cents. About $10 will cover my current cost to shoot a 500 grain cast at around 2,200 ft/sec not counting brass cost. That's where total cost can go up fast. If you have to pay $3 each and they fail after 6 shots that adds another 50 cents per shot or $10 per 20 rounds.