Six factory loadings of the .257 Magnum are offered by the Weatherby company, and all are excellent for their intended purposes. The big cartridge is a bit much for hot-barrel prairie dog shooting, but for reaching across the Back Forty and surprising a distant woodchuck or coyote, the 87-grain loading at 3825 fps will get the job done with room to spare. When zeroed two inches high at 100 yards, it is dead-on at 300 yards and only about half the length of a standing groundhog low at 400 long paces where it is still packing over 1200 foot-pounds (ft-lbs) of energy.

The .257 Wby., .270 Wby., and 7mm Wby. cartridges are built on a shortened H&H case while the .300 Wby. is on the full-length case.

The 100-grain loading at 3600 fps is a great choice for shooting the smaller big game such as southern whitetails and pronghorn antelope so long as the distance exceeds 200 yards; shoot a deer up close with that one and you may take home more burger than chops.

Because of its softness, I will also include the Nosler 115-grain Ballistic Tip in that same category--although it is my favorite when hunting deer and antelope in open country where shots are likely to be out beyond 200 long paces. At closer ranges, the 120-grain Nosler Partition at 3300 fps is a better choice simply because it will damage less of the eating parts.

I also consider it to be the very best choice for any hunter who decides to try the .257 Weatherby on larger game, such as caribou, elk, and moose, at any range. In fact, if I had to do it all from mice to moose with a single factory load in the .257 Weatherby Magnum, it would be the 120-grain Partition.

The factory load with a 117-grain roundnose bullet is a bit of an odd duck because bullets of its shape are not usually associated with an ultrahigh-velocity cartridge such as the .257 Magnum. However, it does have a purpose in the scheme of things. Up until 1964 the barrels of Weatherby rifles in this caliber had a rifling twist rate of 1:12 inches, too slow to stabilize pointed bullets much heavier than 100 grains.

Weatherby offered the 117-grain roundnose because it would stabilize in that twist rate, and the same load is still available for the benefit of those who own rifles built prior to 1964. Due to its softness, that bullet is not as suitable for use on game larger than deer as the 115-grain XFB and the 120-grain Partition.

Pointed bullets weighing 115 grains and up are also better choices than the 100-grain bullet when the wind is blowing rather briskly. Not long back I did some long-range testing of two Weatherby factory loads with the 100-grain Spirepoint and 115-grain Ballistic Tip bullets. Wind velocity ranged up to 20 miles per hour, which is about what you can expect on the typical antelope hunt in Wyoming, a place where strong breezes seem to never stop blowing.

Shooting from the bench, I observed very little difference in wind drift between the two bullets out to 300 yards. But when I switched to 400 yards, I found the 115-grain bullet much easier to keep inside the vital area of the paper target. According to the ballistics charts, wind drift does not differ all that much between those two bullets, but it seems like a lot more in the field.