I was given the ‘opportunity’ to try out Remington’s new .300 Ultra Magnum with this simple statement, "Dad, I bought this new rifle. Would you work up a load for me?". Dad’s being dads, I agreed. Little did I realize the task I was about to put myself through.

Upon receiving the .300 Ultra I opened the box and there was this beautiful piece of equipment. All 26" of stainless steel barrel was attached to a matched receiver and put to bed in an awesome black and gray laminate stock. A quick trip to Randall’s Firearms and I had a set of Leupold bases and rings a top this thumper. A Leupold Vari-x II 6-18x40 AO and duplex cross hairs was the scope of choice.

Now comes the hard part, how much is the ammo? Hurt me baby, $35 a box of twenty! A quick call to my accountant and investment counselor and we had the sad news for my son.

Cost: Rifle $649.95

Bases 18.69

Rings 23.95

Scope 399.95

Factory Ammo 35.00

Subtotal $1,127.54

Tax (7%) 78.93

Total $1,206.47

Minimum wage is currently $6.15 per hour. Hopefully you make more. This combination will take 196.2 hours of work, or about five 40 hour work weeks!

Sometimes reality hurts big. But an even more painful event was about to take place. As I do with all firearms before I fire them, I checked out the rifle and pushed a patch through the barrel. Never in the history of several hundreds of firearms have I ever had a rifle bore that felt so rough. Literally thousands of patches have found their way out of the end of a barrel at my hand. In the barrel of the .300 Ultra I would almost swear I could feel the patches being ‘shredded’ on their short trip. No gunsmithing or barrel lapping was done because I wanted to shoot the rifle box stock. So with an armed guard watching over the ammo, off to the range I went.

I follow the old prescription of breaking in or seasoning a barrel. For the first fifty rounds through a new barrel, shoot one shot and clean, shoot another shot and clean, etc. There are many recipes for barrel seasoning and most will prolong your barrel’s life. One advantage of the shoot and clean method is that it allows the barrel to stay cool and lets you know where that first shot is going to hit.

The Remington Ultra was zeroed at 25 yards first, and this is where the fear crept in. at this stones throw away it was shooting two inch groups, yuck! I kept telling myself, "It will get better, just give it some time". Remington’s 180 grain Nosler Partition was using quite a bit of the target for each group. Three shot groups were averaging three to four inches at 100 yards. These ‘patterns’ continued through the first box of Remington factory loads into the second. The best three shot group out of forty rounds or $70 worth of ammo, was 1.94 inches from center to center. Oh, by the way, this was done in several trips to the shooting range.

The .300 Ultra’s recoil to me really wasn’t that bad and could be lived with, on occasion. But if you are recoil sensitive you may want to consider putting a muzzle brake on your rifle.

Not being satisfied with the result of Remington’s factory ammo I have decided to try reloading.

Look for Part Two on the Remington .300 Ultra Magnum soon.

If you have some reloading information on this cartridge, drop me a line in Shooting Chat.

Gary McCraw
AZOD Shooting Editor
Shooting@azod.com