A light-for-chambering factory load becomes a go-to hunting round, shining even in temperamental rifles!!

By Zachary Hein

Old Reliable had done right by me yet again, this time in the rolling sage-dotted hills at the base of the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming. The 150 gr. 300 Win. Mag. factory load is one I’d come to love and was a particularly easy choice for my Sako S20 since it likes to print three-shot groups of the little SSTs with all holes touching. 

We weren’t even there for antelope – spending fall’s first frosty morning glassing and hoping to fill my good buddy’s mule deer tag. Rounding a knob in the short grass we hit the dirt in tandem, a quartet of antelope does feeding out in front of us in the slanted sunlight with a 3-year-old buck riding herd. Backing out, I sprinted for the truck and my Sako, realizing I’d blundered by leaving it behind, given the unfilled antelope tag in my wallet. 

Retracing my steps, I found my buddy Dave watching the group through his binos. With the sun at our backs, we slid our way forward, the goats getting curious and circling to try to get a better look at us. Propped up on my knee, the suppressed 300 spit once and ensured we’d be warm as we worked the rest of the morning…

As expected, the little round hit precisely where I wanted it to, turning off the buck’s lights with a high shoulder shot that passed cleanly through and left a quarter-sized exit hole. Meat damage was nearly non-existent on the lightly-constructed speed goat, even though we were inside 100 yards. 

Every once in a while you come across a factory loading that a gun just loves. In this case, I stumbled into one that every gun I’ve tried it in has seemed to like – with firearm manufacturers spanning the globe and barrels both factory and custom. While it was trimmed from Hornady’s loaded ammunition line a few years back, the light-for-caliber bullet it employed remains available, meaning it can be recreated if and when I finally run out.

It started many years ago when I stumbled into a stellar price on a unique rifle – but there was a twist. Well, lack thereof. Chambered in 300 Win. Mag., its barrel had a slightly slower twist rate than you’d want, intended to pair with a specific niche brand of lead-free ammunition. The rifle manufacturer guaranteed superb accuracy with that combination, of course!

Problem is, I’m a sucker for a deal because at my core I’m cheap, and that specialty ammo carried a lofty price tag. Instead, I went to my local Cabela’s to see what my options were with a short bullet that the lazy twist 300 Win. Mag. could spin up. In the depths of one of our cyclical ammo crunches, I was hoping for something a little nicer than a basic soft point and found myself staring at one single option – a Hornady Superformance load with 150 grain SST bullets. But would they shoot?

Headed to the range, those undersized pills turned out to be incredibly happy in the rifle. With groups hovering around 0.8”, I was thrilled at my luck and acquired a full case of matching ammo. Over the years, the pairing would take umpteen Kansas whitetails in the hands of myself and my two best friends, all of us dumping does and bucks alike with the rifle and its favorite ammo. We’d sit together in the dunes, glassing every direction and if it was a long shot, they used my gun. The 150s made the flat-shooting magnum a tad flatter even, and bullet performance past 200 yards was spot-on.

At a rather quick 3275 fps, the internet would tell you the little 150 was too lightly constructed for anything bigger than deer. My thoughts and experiences were that the accuracy I was seeing out of the little load meant I could put the bullet right where I wanted inside the ~450 yard range I was shooting animals at. 

At closer range (inside 100) I might not want to hit a shoulder or leg bone with that bullet at that speed, so shots were placed accordingly. In the instances where the angle carried the bullet through the off-side shoulder, more often than not we would ruin meat there as the little SST exited explosively. The flip-side was that rarely did an animal make it more than 50 yards, more often than not dropping in its tracks.

That gun would eventually get haggled off of me by one of the buddies who had tried to buy it year after year, along with three boxes of ammo, even though my standing supply had swelled to several cases at that point. 

Another 300 Win. Mag. replaced it, and though it wasn’t ammo-picky, it also enjoyed the 150s. A lighter 300 that was finicky came next, and that rifle went with me to Idaho where I took my first backcountry elk. Despite what the internet might say, the 150s did their job, each lodging under the skin on the opposite side, with the bull going less than 60 yards and most of that being via downhill slide...

Fast forward to today and I’ve had seven 300 Winchester Magnum rifles from three different factories and two custom builders and all of them have shot well with the 150 grain SST. It isn’t my go-to for all things, but it has become my reliable fall-back for anything deer-size and under – and especially for when I have a gun that isn’t liking other loads. 

Though my ammo stash of the Superformance 150s is still holding out, a 150 grain Interlock loading superseded it as the lightweight Hornady offering a few years back. Those SST bullets are still available however, so now seems like the right time to go ahead and pick up a few boxes just in case I find myself needing to replicate my ‘Old Reliable.’