With the rifle zeroed three inches high at 100 yards, bullets landed an inch high at 300 yards and dead-on my point of aim at 400. Accuracy was minute of angle (MOA) all the way out to that distance. When hunting with that particular rifle and ammunition, I could have held dead-on the vital area of an antelope at any range from just off the toes of my boots all the way out to about 430 yards.

The .257 Wby. generates about the same recoil as the .270 Win.

No worrying about how much to hold over or under--I could have simply plastered the crosshairs where I wanted the bullet to go, allowed for wind drift if needed, squeezed the trigger, and the bullet would have been there faster than I could have thought about it. I realize such an incredibly flat trajectory totally contradicts the exterior ballistics charts, but that's what happened on that day.

Tillard is an avid coyote hunter and made the decision to build a new heavy-barrel rifle in .257 Weatherby Magnum while he was looking over my shoulder through his spotting scope.

The .257 Weatherby Magnum also delivers more than enough energy to cleanly take deer and other game of similar size as far away as any of us should attempt. Right or wrong, 1000 ft-lbs has long been considered the minimum level of energy for quick kills on deer-size game, and the .257 Weatherby Magnum does just that all the way out to 600 yards. At more reasonable distances, meaning inside 400 yards, the distance at which most of us should restrict our shooting, residual energy ranges from 1400 to 1600 ft-lbs, depending on the bullet weight used.

Handloading The .257 Magnum
I know of no American company other than Weatherby presently offering .257 Weatherby Magnum ammunition, but several have taken a stab at other Weatherby cartridges. Weatherby ammunition is loaded by the Swedish firm Norma, and it is always considerably faster than Weatherby cartridges loaded by American companies. This is because Norma and other foreign manufacturers commonly load ammunition to higher chamber pressures than American companies.

.257 WEATHERBY MAGNUM ACCURACY

I have shot rifles in about every caliber imaginable through the years, and I am about convinced that some centerfire cartridges have greater accuracy potential than others. Or perhaps I should put it another way: They may not be inherently more accurate, but the rifles chambered for them seem to always respond to a minimum amount of effort on my part by shooting quite accurately. I have yet to work with a rifle in .223 Remington, .22 PPC, or .220 Swift that I could not coax into shooting decent groups. The same goes for the .308 Winchester, .243 Winchester, 7mm STW, and .300 Winchester Magnum. There are a few others, and the .257 Weatherby Magnum is one of them. I just took a look back at six rifles in .257 Weatherby Magnum I have worked up handloads for in the past. Three are Weatherby Mark Vs, and two are Weatherby Vanguards. The other is a custom rifle on the Remington Model 700 action with a Shilen 26-inch match-grade stainless-steel barrel. Now, get this: Every single one of those rifles delivered sub-MOA accuracy with several factory loads and handloads. The custom rifle consistently shot inside a half-inch with seven different recipes, all loaded with big-game bullets such as the Nosler Partition, Speer Trophy Bonded, and Hornady SST. In addition to being an extremely accurate cartridge, the .257 Magnum is easy to shoot accurately due to it modest recoil. All of this adds up to make it the finest factory antelope cartridge ever created by the hands of mortal man.

With this in mind, it is logical to assume that duplicating factory load velocities when using data developed by American component manufacturers such as Hodgdon, Hornady, Alliant, IMR, Nosler, and others would be impossible. Nothing could be farther from the truth. When developing handloads for various rifles in .257 Magnum I have never found it difficult to duplicate the velocity of Weatherby factory ammunition. Regardless of whether the barrel measures 24 or 26 inches, I seldom fail to reach, or even exceed, 3500 fps with 100-grain bullets and 3300 fps with bullets weighing 115 to 120 grains, all loaded to acceptable chamber pressures.

The Vanguard I shot for this report has a 24-inch barrel, and maximum charges of Reloder 22 and H1000 behind 100-grain bullets in it virtually duplicated the velocity of Weatherby's 100-grain factory load. And the load with Norma MRP was not very far behind. With one exception, the story reads the same for heavier bullets.