A No. 1 in .300 Weatherby: The Best of Both Worlds
I’m a big fan of the .300 Weatherby cartridge, and an even bigger fan of the Ruger No. 1 rifle. You’ve seen several blogs about these fine single-shot firearms here on ExhaustNotes, and I thought I’d add another combining the best of both worlds: A Ruger No. 1 chambered in .300 Weatherby Magnum.
Finding a Rifle with Fancy Walnut
When Ruger announced the .300 Weatherby No. 1 nearly 30 years ago, I wanted one, but I couldn’t find one with fancy wood. Then my interest waned and I was on to other things. I remember seeing one at a gun store in Oregon (it was the first one I’d seen in person), but the wood was plain and I didn’t want to go through the hassle of buying one and having it shipped FFL-to-FFL back to California. Then I saw one with better-than-average wood on Gunbroker and I had it shipped to a dealer here in California, but that rifle was a disappointment. It had an aftermarket recoil pad that didn’t appear in the photos on Gunbroker, so back it went. Then a few years later I saw one that had even better wood (exhibition grade, actually) and I pulled the trigger. When it arrived, I was blown away by the wood.
Ruger No. 1 Accuracy
My .300 Weatherby No. 1 is essentially a new gun, and it may have been unfired when I bought it. Sometimes guys buy these big bore magnums, keep them for several years, and then sell them without ever taking them to the range. Even when folks do shoot their .300 magnum rifles, it’s more often than not the case that very few rounds are fired. Sometimes the folks who buy these things don’t realize just how severe the recoil is, and after one or two shots, they conclude the rifle is not for them.
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I held off firing this rifle for a long time. It wasn’t because I was afraid of the recoil (although it is significant). I guess on some level what I feared was that the rifle would be inaccurate. I didn’t want to not like it, so I didn’t shoot it. I owned this rifle a good 10 years before I got around to mounting a scope on it and to see how it performed. That happened just a couple of weeks ago.
In a word, the rifle performed magnificently. I put a Redfield variable scope on it and did my normal sighting-in routine at the range. That consisted of loosely mounting the scope, taking it to the range to move it back and forth to get the eye relief where I want it to be, and then setting up the rifle on a rest. The drill there is to look through the bore at a target at 50 yards (centering the target in the bore) and then, without disturbing the rifle, dialing in the windage and elevation turrets so that the scope’s crosshairs are centered on the target. I did that, and my first shot went exactly where it was supposed to go.
The next step was to move the target out to 100 yards and adjust the scope at that range. It took only three groups to get the rifle zeroed.
The load I used was one that performs well in my bolt action .300 Weatherby bolt action rifles, and that’s an upper-range dose of IMR 7828 SSC propellant with the 180-grain Remington jacketed soft point bullet and CCI magnum rifle primers. What’s satisfying is that this is a minute-of-angle load (it shoots into an inch at 100 yards), and I haven’t really done any load development with this rifle yet. It’s almost kind of disappointing when they shoot this well immediately (half the fun is experimenting to find the right load), but hey, it is what it is.
I’ve found that the .300 Weatherby Magnum is an inherently accurate cartridge when loaded with heavier bullets and maximum or near-maximum propellant charges. I have a few boxes left of the 180-grain Remington bullets, and that’s what I’ll be using for a bit. I can’t hunt with those bullets in California (we have to use copper solids here in the Peoples’ Republik), but the Remington pills are legal on the rifle range in our gloriously-progressive state, and they’re good for hunting in other states with more normal hunting rules.
Finding a Ruger’s Age
Ruger has a spot on their website where you can punch in the serial number to find out when the rifle shipped. I did, and mine left the factory in 1993. Yep, it’s 26 years old, and it’s in as-new condition.
The Bottom Line
The bottom line: I like this rifle. It’s chambered for a great cartridge, it has outstanding wood, it’s accurate, and it’s a single shot. There’s just something cool about single-shot rifles, especially when they have wood like this one.
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A gorgeous rifle; and that it shoots so well makes it even sweeter.
Beautiful walnut with great figure….. eventually what many fans of Ruger No.1 rifles get more selective about in their search for them, me too!
Nice rifle!