Last-Call Loads

Last-Call Loads

The end is nigh for some old cartridges. Is one of your favorites on the death watch?
By Rick Hacker - Guns & Ammo Magazine

Ever since I passed life's half-century mark, I've found myself becoming a regular reader of the obituaries in the daily newspaper. As much as I like to see my name in print, that's the last place I'd want to find it--and now that I think about it, that's the last place it will probably be. But more and more, I'm seeing the names of people I've known, some of them younger than I (in which case I think, "He went ahead of his time) and some of them older (wherein I philosophize, "Well, he had a full life"). But in either case, we all hate to lose a friend.

It's that way with cartridges. Some of them have died a natural death, some have lingered well beyond their time, and some of them...well, we just know they aren't long for this world.

In most cases, we hate to lose a cartridge, even though its usefulness has long since passed. On the other hand, it could be argued that we have way too many cartridges already, so we might as well get rid of the excess baggage, or as Ebenezer Scrooge said in Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," "...and decrease the surplus population."

So with that in mind, here are some of what I call "boot hill bullets," cartridges that, in my opinion, have outlived their usefulness. I suspect I will hit upon a few of your favorites, but in the interest of objectivity, I've also put a few of my own favorites on the death list as well. So don't burn up your keyboard sending me vitriolic e-mails. This is just one gun writer's opinion. Besides, one cannot stop the inevitable.

Starting with the smallest ones first, what's with the .22 Hornet? In fact, why is this thing still around? Surprisingly, Federal lists two loadings for it, as does Hornady. Remington has three, and Winchester has two. But why? The .223 Remington is far superior, as is the .22-250 in terms of trajectory and velocity.
And Hornady's new .204 Ruger, with its muzzle velocity of 3,900 fps and a drop of less than four inches at 300 yards (compared to the .22 Hornet's 3,100 fps and a 300-yard drop of more than 16 inches), really puts this archaic cartridge to shame. Don't get me wrong; the .22 Hornet was fine when Col. Townsend Whelen and his cronies began playing around with it in the 1920s, and it was a great long-distance rat-catcher in Martini and Stevens single-shots (and even the Winchester bolt-action Model 54 back in the 1930s), but its time has passed.

Likewise, I predict the curtain will soon fall on the .218 Bee. It was developed in 1938 for the extinct Winchester Model 65 lever action, a pistol-gripped, half-magazine version of the older Model 92. Aside from a few guns such as the Marlin 1894C of a few years ago and the Taurus Tracker, Thompson/Center's Contender and Browning's limited reissue of the Model 65 back in 1989, not much has been produced for this once-popular varmint-buster, which is basically a .32-20 case necked down to .22 caliber
For that matter, why is the .22 Long still hanging around? There is nothing that the .22 Long Rifle can't do better or that the .22 Short can't do with less cost and noise. Originally a black-powder cartridge developed in 1871, the Long didn't quite make the jump ballistically when smokeless powder came along in the 1890s. Yet it keeps hanging around, initially because there were some rifles, such as the Model 1890 Winchester pump, that were chambered specifically for it. But no more. Today, only a few companies such as CCI and Remington still catalog the .22 Long, and I don't know why.

By the same token, much as I have nostalgic feelings for it, I don't understand why the .32 Winchester Special is still with us. It's like the guest who came for dinner and just wouldn't leave. It's been hanging around for 104 years, having been introduced in 1902. Perhaps it's because of all those Winchester Model 94s and Marlin 336 lever actions that have been chambered for it over the years. I remember when growing up in Arizona that the conventional wisdom held that if you were going deer hunting, you took a "thutty-thutty," but if you were trekking through the Coconino National Forest after black bear, you'd better be carrying a saddle gun chambered for the .32 Special, as that was a much more potent bruin-buster.

In actual fact, the two cartridges are practically identical ballistically. So why was the .32 Special even conceived? It was simply a product of its time. Although smokeless-powder rifles and cartridges were on the market by 1895, the newfangled propellant was slow to catch on in a shooting world that had known nothing but black powder since Sir Francis Bacon's time. In fact, it wasn't until 1900 that Colt finally warranted its Single Action Army for smokeless.

Thus, even though the Winchester Model 94 is credited with being the first smokeless-powder firearm, a lot of turn-of-the-last-century shooters were still sticking to their black-powder rifles. To wean them over to the new Model 1894, the .32 Special was developed as a cartridge that was adaptable for reloading in either black powder or smokeless, much as the .44 Special evolved from black powder to smokeless five years after the appearance of the .32 Special.

That's all well and good, but aside from reenactors and Cowboy Action shooters, we're not burning up a whole lot of black-powder cartridges today, especially in deer rifles. So it's time to say adios to the .32 Winchester Special, even though it does hold many fond memories for me of my early hunting forays.

It's even tougher for me to shut down the life-support system of the .348 Winchester, which I have always thought of as the ultimate close-range elk round. A chunky brute of a cartridge that can trace its lineage back to the .50-110, the .348 could anchor any horned or antlered creature that roamed the North American continent. Unfortunately, there was only one rifle that was ever chambered for this cartridge, the Winchester Model 71, and they stopped making that smooth-shooting lever action in 1958.

Although it originally came out in 150-, 200- and 250-grain bullet weights, the .348 was especially potent in the latter offering. But both the underachieving 150- and the ballistically superior 250-grain loadings were dropped in 1962, leaving us stuck with the 200-grain bullet, which doesn't do justice to the cartridge.

In 1986 Browning came out with a limited run of Model 71 rifles and carbines in .348, and demand for this effective round enjoyed a minor resurgence as today's sportsmen discovered what earlier big-game hunters already knew: for anything up to 150 yards, one shot with a .348 was all you needed.
Nonetheless, the appearance of innovations such as Hornady's Lever
Evolution cartridges have pretty much spelled the doom for the .348 Winchester. I'm already stocking up on boxes of the stuff because only a few companies such as Winchester (with its single 200-grain offering) and Buffalo Bore (which loads a 250-grain jacketed softpoint) are holding on. Soon, I predict even Winchester will discontinue the .348, which will then be going the way of the cartridge it replaced: the obsolete .33 Winchester.

Another once-popular round that is not long for this world is the .38-40, which is being kept alive by the Single Action Shooting Society (of which I am a life member, incidentally). The .38-40 should really have been called the .40-40 because the bullet is actually a .401-inch-diameter slug, but the fact remains that without Cowboy Action events, this rifle/pistol cartridge would have outlived its usefulness long ago.
Like the .44-40, the .38-40 started out life as a black-powder round but made the transition to the smokeless age. It can be loaded up to deer-hunting pressures for use in Model 92 Winchesters and Model 1894 Marlins and modern replicas (but not in weaker toggle-link Winchester 73s, which should only be fired with mild factory loads). But aside from the Colt Model P and some 19th century replicas, there are few modern guns chambered for it. Although companies like Black Hills and Ten-X may disagree--and I truly hope I'm wrong--the ol' .38-40 may be heading for the last roundup in a few more years.

The .32-20 won't be far behind it. In fact, I suspect it will go first. Right now it is only being kept alive by Cowboy Action shooters who don't like the recoil of the .44-40 and .45 Colt. But the .32-20, originally developed in 1882 for the Winchester 73, was popular only because Colt also chambered its Single Action Army for it. Although Marlin chambered a few 1894CL lever actions for the .32-20 from 1988 to 1994, the little cartridge has clearly outlived its usefulness. A .32 H&R Magnum will outperform the .32-20 WCF any day of the week and is a lot easier to find in sporting goods stores. And I say this while freely admitting than one of my favorite "rabbit eradicating" guns is a Winchester Model 92 carbine chambered in .32-20.

I have a similar saddle gun in .25-20, which is another old cowboy round ready to hit the trail. Basically, it is a necked-down .32-20 and throws an 86-grain Remington factory-loaded bullet with considerable accuracy out to about 75 yards. I hate to see the old .25-20 go because it once was the favored ranch and farm gun for varmints. But there aren't as many farms and ranches as there used to be and, besides, we've got some 'chuck busters like the .223 Winchester Super Short Magnum that will shoot farther, faster and flatter.

Of course, not every cartridge destined for the dumpster comes from the distant past. Take the 8mm Remington Magnum. Why this cartridge is still around is anybody's guess. It kicks harder than the .338 Winchester Magnum and doesn't offer any real advantage in ballistics over other cartridges in its class, such as the .300 Winchester Magnum.
The .284 Winchester is another round that has overstayed its welcome, even though it was originally chambered in two of my favorite lever actions, the Savage Model 99 and the Winchester 88, as well as the Winchester 100 semiauto. But none of these guns is made anymore, and even the Browning BLR is no longer chambered for it. Why does it continue to take up space on gun dealers' shelves?

And what about the .45 GAP? It was introduced only recently as a factory load, and to much acclaim, though I could never--and still can't--get excited about it. The .45 GAP (which stands for Glock Automatic Pistol) is simply a squashed-down, wannabe .45 ACP, created to fit into the medium-framed polymer Glock 37. Nothing wrong with that, but it duplicates an already-great cartridge, so what's the point? There are plenty of small-framed .45 ACPs already out there. Even Springfield Armory has discontinued its XD .45 GAP pistol in favor of the XD .45 ACP, and Kimber has no plans to chamber any guns for it.

That should tell us something.