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My favorites overall: the Swedes, the Swiss and the 03-A3 with honorable mention to the No. 4 rifle and the 7.65x53M1909 long rifle. Just don’t make me choose between my 03-A3 and the M96 Swede with the Soderin peep!

Too many hunting cartridges?

No! Still, some are superfluous. Wayne thinks these indispensable.

The Top 20

BY WAYNE VAN ZWOLL

One rifle-maker I know chambers for about eighty cartridges. If reamers were mortgages, he’d qualify for a bail-out. But he’s not selling any. “Customers appreciate the choice,” he says. “Some want a round no one else is shooting.” New cartridge designs have come in quick succession over the last decade, with the proliferation of short rimless magnums. Some riflemen would argue we have a surplus now – that there’s a lot of duplication in the middle and utterly useless numbers at the extremes.

Wildcatting hit its stride after World War II, when returning GIs fashioned their own high-octane cartridges from .30-06 and .300 H&H hulls. A ready supply of 1903 Springfields, 1917 En-fields and 1898 Mausers made experimenting cheap. Improved optics put affordable scopes in easy reach, so barrels didn’t need iron sights. Those were the days of Mashburn and Ackley and myriad lesser-known pioneers, whose designs prospered. When Winchester rolled out the first of a series of short (.30-06-length) belted magnums – the .458 – in 1956, wildcatters fell upon it like wolves. The subsequent .264, .338 and .300 Winchester Magnums, and Remington’s 7mm, soon filled the obvious voids. The new magnums confirmed the merits of Roy Weatherby’s proprietary .257, .270, 7mm and full-length .300, introduced during World War II!