{"id":113670,"date":"2019-08-05T19:28:41","date_gmt":"2019-08-05T23:28:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gunsamerica.com\/digest\/?p=113670"},"modified":"2025-11-07T04:11:24","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T10:11:24","slug":"hunt365-hunting-with-the-new-350-legend-cartridge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gunsamerica.com\/digest\/hunt365-hunting-with-the-new-350-legend-cartridge\/","title":{"rendered":"Hunting with The New 350 Legend Cartridge: Bye, Bye 300 Blackout?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The pair of hogs popped out of the South Texas mesquite over 100 yards away and made straight for the deer feeder. I shifted in my seat and got ready for a shot\u2014and for my first hunting experience using the new 350 Legend cartridge from Winchester Ammunition.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Hunting
The 350 Legend Super X Power-Point is one of four new loads the company is making for the 350 Legend line up. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The two hogs came up against the back of the fence surrounding the feeder, but they knew their way around. Literally. They slid along the far side of the chest-high fence and angled back into the feeder area proper, the ranch staff here had left the fence gate open the last several days in anticipation of this hunt.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d sat in this elevated\nhunting blind for nearly two hours, sipping water and sweating it out, the\ntemperature in the high 90\u2019s and very little breeze. The private ranch I was the\nguest of was about four miles from the Mexican border and near the town of\nEagle Pass, Texas. The land was rolling and rocky, covered in large swaths of short\nmesquite and brush interspersed with stony stretches of open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The land, according to\nthe ranch staff was also home to hundreds if not thousands of hungry hogs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Time to put a tiny dent\nin the population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two boars were inside the fence now, and one stopped along the far side, nose down to feed. I lined up the crosshairs of my Leupold<\/a> VX Freedom scope onto his heart-lung area and squeezed off a shot. The 180-grain bullet from the 350 Legend SuperX round dropped the hog almost instantaneously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, before he hit the\nground, the other pig was already scurrying for the gate.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That second hog, though,\nslowed his pace and kept glancing towards the feeder as he retreated, his nose\nup to the air. I knew he was smelling that good corn the feeder had dropped out\nan hour earlier and was unwilling to let it go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His mistake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I worked the bolt on my Winchester XPR rifle<\/a> and chambered another 350 Legend SuperX round.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The hog trotted into the\nmesquite behind the fence, then almost immediately turned and got back to the\nfence. He followed the fence line for many yards, then put his head down to eat\nsome corn that must\u2019ve made it just outside the enclosure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The wire fence was\nmade of rectangles that looked about six inches long by four inches high. And\nthe hog\u2019s head was framed in one of those rectangles. I hadn\u2019t had much time\nwith the Winchester XP rifle rig, but it pegged 1.25-inch groups at 100 yards a\nfew hours earlier. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I lined up for a headshot, set the reticle below the hog\u2019s ear and squeezed the trigger. Hog #2 flopped onto the dry South Texas dirt as if hit by a sledgehammer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Hunting
McCombie dropped these two hogs with one shot each of Winchester\u2019s new 350 Legend SuperX Power-Point load. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The hog hunt occurred on April 2019, my first exposure to Winchester’s new ammunition, the 350 Legend cartridge. The hunt was at Winchester\u2019s invitation and included Dusty Gibson of Winchester Ammunition, Shauna Campbell of Winchester Repeating Arms, and social media influencer Nikki Boxler<\/a>. We took down over a dozen South Texas hogs, nearly all of them with single shots of the 350 Legend in the SuperX load. Ranges were from 50 to 125 yards.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While \u201cnew\u201d in the ammunition<\/a> market often means different packaging and tweaking the round\u2019s name, the 350 Legend actually represents a useful and handy hunting load.\u00a0One element in the \u201cnew\u201d is that the 350 Legend does what the 300 Blackout was supposed to be doing but has generally, in my opinion, failed to do: anchor big game with one shot, especially tougher game like hogs. In fact, it looks to me like the 350 Legend makes the 300 BLK obsolete for hunting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Plus, the new Winchester\nround provides another option for deer hunters who live in states which only\nallow a straight-walled cartridge for deer hunting with centerfire rifles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Hunting
Winchester appears to be on to something good with the new 350 Legend line of ammunition. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

According to Gibson, Ammunition Product Manager for Winchester, the 350 Legend got its start when the Winchester marketing and research teams got together and asked themselves what could be done with existing 223 Rem brass to create a new round for hunters and recreational shooters. They were hoping to make a straight-walled cartridge for those states that required straight-wall centerfire for deer hunting. They also wanted a more powerful round than the 300 BLK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As to why they looked\nat 223 Rem brass for ideas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur thinking was, if\nwe based this new cartridge on the Rem 223, we\u2019d have a round that could be\nused in AR-platform rifles as well as bolt actions,\u201d Gibson told me. \u201cSo, what\nwe did was to cut off .223 brass at the bottom of the case\u2019s shoulder. That\ngave us a straight-walled cartridge which, it turned out, had an opening at the\nmouth essentially of a .357 Magnum bullet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winchester eventually\nmoved away from using the .223 brass and came up with its own, similar brass, added\na .35-caliber bullet, and started experimenting with powder loads and primers.\nWhen Winchester was done, the result was the 350 Legend Cartridge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Basic\n350 Legend cartridge specs: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n