receiver as it did on the older rifles. In his book, FN Browning: Armorer to the World (Stoeger Pub., 320 pgs., 1999), author Gene Gangarosa offered a detailed account of the BLRs design and production history. Still incorporated in current-production BLR rifles, the Lewis design utilizes a rotating bolt that locks into the barrel (or receiver, on early models) for robustness. It offers the power to take Americas largest big Both BLRs I tested demonstrated smooth-to-operate actions. While these are both excellent deer cartridges, attempting to include the .358 Winchester in their class does it a great injustice. By the 20th century, firearm technology quickly evolved. Gun shows a few small light dings in wood but remains overall excellent. It comes with one metal magazine. advantage over the .308. Manage Settings Mechanically, the BLR differs greatly Many writers have tried to bury it with the epitaph, "It's a fine little woods cartridge." This is a significant advantage for the .338 Federal vs the .308 Winchester and an even bigger advantage for the .358 Winchester. Detachable box magazine. I have numerous .308s, a Tikka T3 in .338 federal and a Ruger mountain rifle in .338 win mag. Remember though, the figures here are for a 7.3 pound rifle. That same load in the lighter Browning BLR produces 32.51 ft-lbs or free recoil energy, which is closely approaching .300 Win Mag levels. Compare the .358's energy and velocity to the 405 grain 45-70 load. The .338 Winchester Magnum pushes a 250 grain bullet at 2660 fps for a MPBR of 265 yards. real-world ballistics, shooters might scramble to get Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page. L-R: Hornady's 200-grain Spire Point, Barnes' 200-grain WTS OR - Browning BLR (pre '81) .358 Win | Northwest Firearms From the Henry 1866 to the Winchester Model 1873, these rifles became emblematic of a pivotal era in American history. Remington Sendero that was very accurate, flat-shooting, and Second, BLRs have thin, lightweight, sporter-profile barrels on them. The fact that the .358 also combines these desirable traits should make us stop and think. Up front is either a gold or fiber-optic bead. Note: An in depth review of the Browning BLR Lightweight Takedown rifle can be found on the Product Reviews Page. of the thirty-fives is my beloved .358 Winchester, and only The new design looked like a mechanical gear in cross-section. When considering bullet selection for the .358 Winchester, a flat point or round nose bullet in the 220 to 250 grain range would make an ideal brush load for shots out to about 200 yards. Let's compare its trajectory with other popular cartridges to see if this criticism is valid. wide trigger made it feel lighter. Most .338 Federal factory loads have more kinetic energy than the .358 Winchester at all ranges. .358 winchester | Nosler Reloading Forum I would also like to look at the trajectory issue from another perspective. The magazine was also redesigned so it sat almost flush against the bottom of the receiver. If that Idaho hunt gets rescheduled, I may choose similar BLR, in a different chambering. to 24 in.OVERALL LENGTH: 40 in. One of the best, most efficient, and handiest However, the 7.62x51mm and the .308 Winchester both achieved that performance with a much shorter case(51mm vs 63mm) due to advances in powder technology that occurred after the development of the .30-06. The BLR features a rotating bolt head, just like a Schnabel forearm. The Browning BLR Lightweight Lever-Action Rifle comes checkered and features a pistol grip, walnut stock, and Schnabel fore-end. All four standard models feature Brownings signature gold trigger and almost 20 chamberings ranging from .22-250 Remington to .300 Winchester Magnum. While it can certainly be used as a woods cartridge, the .358 is clearly, by any measure, more than a woods cartridge. Browning BAR and BLR Integrated Scope Mount System 1" Medium Height Gloss Black. Oh, and the .338 Federal does all that while at the same time fitting in a short length rifle action as well. However, calling it a "woods cartridge" suggests that it is in the class of the .32 Special or the .35 Remington. notch (rear); red fiber optic (front)STOCK: Grey laminate, straight gripFINISH: Matte nickel (aluminum); matte (stainless steel)MSRP: $1,310 (tested)IMPORTER: Browning, browning.com. Adjustable iron sights are standard. In addition to all being excellent choices for deer sized game, these cartridges are also suitable for bigger creatures under the right circumstances. The other was the BLR Lightweight 81 Stainless Takedown chambered in .300 Win. 358 Winchester Load Data - Shooting Times That effort resulted in 1- to 2-MOA accuracy using factory loads. Capacity: 4 Round Detachable. is similar in trajectory to the 180 grain .308 Winchester, but the .358 has a greater frontal area and over all killing power. The levergun's box magazine makes it possible to shoot pointed bullets without fear of chain firing. Adjustable, low-profile rear sight. Browning ~ BLR ~ .358 Win. - Guns International It identifies the owner as Baldy Bullet Formally released in 2006, the .338 Federal was the first cartridge to bear the Federal name. The table below compares the recoil produced by the loads compared above for those cartridges when fired from a 7.3 pound rifle. The BLR reviewed has a pistol grip stock, 20 inch barrel, deep blued finish and American Walnut checkered stock. Though the .348 Winchester was only available in the older Model 71 lever action rifle, the .358 Winchester was initially offered in the more modern Winchester Model 70 and Model 88 rifles. Many hunters do not mind carrying long, heavy rifles and can endure heavy recoil and muzzle blast. Why? open sights, and is drilled and tapped for scope bases. Book an outstanding black bear hunt here. needs for hunting big game. The sights are basic but easy to see. All other things being equal, a bigger bullet will make a bigger hole, cause more tissue damage, and result in more blood loss. head which locks into the breech of the barrel, allowing the As you can see, theres a wide disparity in availability between the three cartridges. cast bullets from Mt. The .358 Winchester from a .308 Winchester; which no one regards as a short range Most were within 150 yards. I am also surprised that the .338 fed is not more popular. The guns overall length is 40 inches, and up to 45 inches if chambered in a longer cartridge such as the 7mm Rem. Book an excellent African safari hunt here. It turns out that .358 Winchester is a rare caliber in virtually all of the rifles that were once chambered for it (Win. How do we explain this, considering that the velocity of that old cartridge is anemic compared to the .358? Even so, no animal will never know the difference if your shot is placed in the right spot. The Big Game Hunting Blog is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.ca, Amazon.com.au, and other Amazon stores worldwide. I hunted some last season with a .25-06 The .358 themselves with a rifle that is too heavy and ill-balanced for The .358 Winchester cartridge has been around for almost fifty years. Attempts to modernize the lever-action rifle continued with John Brownings Winchester Model 1895, which accepted a box magazine instead of a tube. It appears that you are accessing the Browning Website from outside North America. Finally, let's look at bullet weights for the largest North American game. Note: An article about the .358 Win. However, for many of us a shorter, lighter rifle is a welcome thing. Reduce your loads initially by 10% and then work from there. bullet. BLR Lightweight with Curved Grip - Lever-Action Rifle - Browning The BLRs handling offers a balance point at the front of the chamber, which gives the guns a so-called between-the-hands feel. Most loads for the cartridge also carry more energy downrange than typical .358 Winchester loads, but not quite as much as the .338 Federal. Given a 20-inch barrel, the BLR is shorter at 40 inches overall. The Folding Hammer has four positions: Full-cock, half-cock, the folded hammer position, and the dropped, or fired position. Also the frontal diameter of the .338 is only 8% greater than the .308. If you are a handloader, all three cartridges are generally good options for reloaders. of power for elk-sized game out to 300 yards. Browning keeps it in production. The .243 Winchester, .260 Remington, and 7mm-08 Remington are among the most popular cartridges descended from the .308 Winchester these days and use a modified .308 Winchester case necked down to 6mm (.243), 6.5mm (.264), and 7mm (.284) respectively. Browning borrowed a page from their shotgun playbook by giving the White Gold Medallion BLR a wider pistol grip and round forearm with a Schnabel forend. BLR Lightweight `81 - Lever-Action Rifle - Browning However, I don't reload so ammunition could be an issue. It was better suited for shooting bears across a canyon, which is ultimately what happened on that hunt. The .338 Federal is not quite as resistant to wind drift as the .308 Winchester though and it does have more recoil than the .308 Winchester as well. 200 grain loads are most popular for that cartridge. 034006120. In testing this BLR, Hodgdons With a 250 grain bullet loaded to 2300 fps, you could even take on the big bears of the north. Jon Wolfe has written an excellent review of this rifle that can be found on the Product Review Page of Guns and Shooting Online. All Guns and Ammo subscribers now have digital access to their magazine content. This criticism of the .358, unfortunately, is true. I sold This means that they heat up in a hurry. My grandfather owned a BLR equipped with those dreadful shoot-through scope rings, and they required the shooter to lift his head completely off the stock to use the scope, which caused a sharp jab to the cheek. Browning feature that is hard to describe, but is more of a feeling; The .358 Winchester shoots the largest diameter bullets of the bunch. Precision barrel and lightweight aluminum receiver with polished blued finish. We see that there are popular cartridges that generate recoil equal to or exceeding that of the .358 Winchester. At the same time, the .308 Winchester and .358 Winchester both have the same maximum average pressure of 52,000 CUP using the crusher method. Even then, this may not be a big issue for most hunters, but its certainly something to keep in mind. American big game, I highly recommend it. Out of stock. It does everything great. Meanwhile, everyone is oohing and aahing over the sexy magnums or playing Old West Buffalo Hunter with big bores. It seems that the only .35 caliber This means that the .358 can realize its full potential in a 20 to 22 inch barrel rather than the 26 inch barrel needed for most magnum cartridges. The trigger pull on my The BLR Lightweight Stainless with Pistol Grip shares the stainless motif, wearing a stainless barrel and nickel-finished alloy receiver. The Browning BLR for sale is well suited for big game hunting or target shooting due to its unique magazine fed lever action design. I have a Browning 358. a savage 338. a Rem 308. and a pile of brass.lol FIND A DEALER TO PURCHASE Company. From the half-cock position, the top of the hammer can be rotated forward so that the front of the hammer cannot contact the rear of the firing pin. New cases are available from Hornady, Starline, and Winchester. 357 lightweight bullets, plus the FTX, and XTP in the 358, for ballistics are ignorant on the subject proclaim that the .358 Winchester Browning BLR Lightweight Rifle | Sportsman's Warehouse What does this mean in the real world? To evaluate a sampling of Brownings current-production BLRs, I ordered two representative rifles for range work. While the 150gr .308 Winchester load does have a somewhat flatter trajectory than the .338 Federal, the .338 Federal has virtually the same trajectory as the 180gr .308 Winchester load and has substantially more kinetic energy than both .308 loads from the muzzle out to 500 yards. Are you a handloader? Pistols will no longer ship with braces. performance on vermin and predators. I have used this bullet for many Click to reveal The author used Hornady dies for this report. with known performance characteristics. bullet points from recoil damage. 225-grain XLC bullet. A favorite of some collectors, the highly figured maple stock has been graded AAA, and is accented by rosewood forend and grip caps. After more than three shots, be prepared to let the barrel cool or youll see groups begin to wander. Because of the limited selection of factory ammunition, the .358 has long been a handloaders' cartridge. Not surprisingly, the 150gr .308 Winchester load has the flattest trajectory of the bunch. AXIL XCOR Earbuds Review: Read Before You Buy! Browning BLR Review - Guns and Ammo So lets examine one of the brands most enduring designs. Browning BLR an excellent choice for any North American big The BLR Lightweight 81 Stainless is rough and ready to the core. Browning's BLR is an enduring lever-action design that shoots as well as many contemporary bolt-action hunting rifles. the lightning quick repeatability of a lever action. It has been available for several years with blued metal and walnut stock, and Browning has recently introduced a stainless steel version with a grey laminate stock. By and large, my experience with the BLRs was educational, and I have become a fan of Brownings clever lever. Nosler M21 Rifle Review: Read Before Buying! I did mount Leupold scopes to both guns for this evaluation. I did some research and became bewildered as to how the .358 Winchester had nearly gone into obsolescence and had been such a sales flop. The SCAR 15P is chambered for 5.56 NATO and, with its 7.5-inch barrel, is the most compact SCAR to date. The Barnes 250-grain bullet shoots almost as flat. Following a survey of Brownings current offerings, Im excited to try the 6-pound BLR Lightweight in .308 Win., which measures 40 inches and handles like a grouse gun. For the .358 this includes 200 to 225 grain bullets. Because of this, in addition to the difficulty of finding a used .358 rifle, they demand premium prices that typically exceed $1000. Being a custom gun, many features of the SFX9 can be tailored for the end user, including the sights Kurtenbach's test model has a Trijicon RMR. As a matter of record, Lewis was credited for designing the BLRs action. Since many install muzzle brakes to tame their heavy recoil, the muzzle blast can become literally deafening. Their downside is that they require longer barreled, heavier rifles and generate enormous recoil and muzzle blast. products online at: www.browning.com. Balance is important to hunters who may use the rifle while hunting in a stand or stalking big game in thick cover. magazine body that does not protrude significantly below the Though they have different overall lengths, they are still very similar in overall size and all fit in a short action rifle. It looks like it weighs 6.5lbs bare and has a 20" barrel. Barrel Finish . For assistance in dating the production year of your BLR, please click on the button above for more info. The Barnes 225 grain TSX loaded to 2400 - 2500 fps might make the ultimate all-around large game load for North American hunting with the .358. It is a strong, well designed action. If I were buying a BLR to scope, Id avoid scopes with an objective lens larger than 40mm. The Barnes load was outlined as achieving 2557 but my experience has been that my Browning BLR with a 20 inch barrel, usually falls about 50 to 75 fps slower. An example of data being processed may be a unique identifier stored in a cookie. It is also light and compact, which capitalizes on one of the major virtues of the cartridge. On the other hand, .358 Winchester ammo is even more rare. is stout to shoot. Unveiled the same year as the .243 Winchester all the way back in 1955, the .358 Winchester also uses a modified .308 Winchester case. The .358 BLR that I have This would be a relatively flat shooting load for pronghorn or deer out to 300 yards. SKU: 034006120. At 50 yards, I had no problem hitting an 8-inch target from the sitting, kneeling or standing positions. The rifle situation is very similar to the ammunition situation with these cartridges: .308 Winchester is by far the most popular with the .338 Federal and .358 Winchester, in that order, following far behind the .308. On my last Idaho bear hunt, I carried a bolt gun in .270 Weatherby Magnum featuring a 26-inch barrel and 46 inches in length. Reset Filters. The .358 Winchester remains a popular big-bore hunting cartridge and is easy to reload. In terms of power, efficiency, accuracy, and recoil, the They have often wielded this power to cripple enormously useful cartridges, and the .358 Winchester has been one of their victims. The BLR is in In fact, that cartridge is certainly one of the Top 10 best selling rifle cartridges in the United States each year, if not in the Top 5. Initially, the BLR was offered in either .243 Winchester or .308 Winchester. The barrel on BLR Takedown models is factory drilled and tapped for an optional forward-mounted, scout-style scope base to provide a rock-solid optics mounting platform, allowing you to remove the barrel for transportation and storage without losing your scopes zero. The .358 runs anywhere from 100 to 300 fps behind the velocities of the .308 Winchester, approximately 600 fps behind the .300 Winchester Magnum and 250 to 350 fps behind the .338 Winchester Magnum. M70, Win. While there are a few high velocity cartridges intended for dangerous game, the great majority of these cartridges fall into the medium velocity, heavy bullet category. Though its still hanging around, the cartridge has greatly declined in popularity in recent years. can only serve to make a hunter better with his rifle come (Mark Fingar photo) April 02, 2021 By Brad Fitzpatrick sighted in at 200 yards, bullet impact is only 2.4 inches high The 225gr. The .358 case is relatively short, and most of the above loads are compressed. I live in New South Wales, Australia. is the only factory load available at this time; the Winchester Browning 358 Win For Sale | Browning 358 Win Price - Omaha Outdoors The forearm has a barrel band. Morgan, UT 84050 For medium to large game, the .358 pokes big holes The .45-70 is another very popular cartridge. but died. sluggish, so they were discontinued. Im reloading and playing with 308/338/358 rifles. Some of our partners may process your data as a part of their legitimate business interest without asking for consent. Please read the description before purchasing. is a short range cartridge only. That reason, combined with the relative scarcity of .358 Winchester factory ammo, makes that cartridge an especially appealing choice for handloaders. The rifle is stainless/laminate. Nuances of select walnut. I used the Hornady Ballistic calculator and ShootersCalculator.com to compare trajectory, wind drift, and recoil for the cartridges. We and our partners use cookies to Store and/or access information on a device. Neither scope had large objective lenses, so they fit nicely. Currently, Savage and Wilson Combat are the two primary options for hunters wanting a new bolt action rifle or carbine chambered in .338 Federal. Straight grip walnut stock and forearm with gloss finish. Jeff Bradley shows off the Modern Hunting Rifle (MHR) from Christensen Arms at SHOT Show 2023. Browning has chambered their BLR off and on This means I will earn a small commission (at no extra cost to you) if you make a purchase. Thats not great when shooting from the prone, but when sitting, kneeling or standing, the BLR can be worked quickly for fast follow-on shots. That just aint so. That being said, the 7mm Remington Magnum quickly surpasses the .338 Federal in the energy department as the bullets travel downrange. Finally, the majority of .358 Winchester factory loads shoot bullets in the 180-225 grain range. Model: BLR Lightweight '81. This perception, more than anything else, may explain the mystery of the .358's unpopularity. 220 or 225 grain bullets can be loaded to between 2400 and 2500 fps with several powders. game animals with reliability, using the right bullet. This picture shows the hammer in its safety position. At this time, the Browning BLR (Browning Lever Action Rifle) is the only rifle currently manufactured in .358 Winchester. All of these are fine hunting cartridges, each capable of providing a quick and humane kill within their range limitations. it. cases in the world, that being the .308 Winchester case, which The White Gold Medallion Maple weighed just 6 pounds, which makes it as light as the average bolt gun in this same caliber. A barrel manufacturer like E.R. Unfortunately, the hunt, like so many events in 2020, was cancelled. Baldy bullets, cast from quality alloy Since its probably the single most popular caliber in the United States, virtually every major style of bullet is available in .308 like the Barnes TTSX, Berger VLD, the Hornady ELD-X, GMX, InterBond, InterLock, and SST, the Nosler AccuBond, AccuBond Long Range, Ballistic Tip, E-Tip, and Partition, the Remington Core Lokt, the Swift Scirocco and A-Frame, and the Winchester Power Point (just to name a few). TYPE: Lever action, magazine fedCARTRIDGE: 7mm-08 Rem., .243 Win. It initially gained a reputation as a good woods cartridge for hunting medium game. As I often do, I take things to the extreme when I become interested. The barrel is marked on the right side with the caliber and patent information in two lines and the right has the Browning Utah and Montreal addresses over .

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