.280 Remington: A Step Back Into The Past, With an Eye to the Future with an Old Friend!
Numerous hunters gathered around the back of a pickup in front of Heinsohn’s Store, the hunters’ gathering point in our part of Texas back in the late 1950’s and 60’s. The pickup belonged to a family friend. If he was showing a deer, I knew it had to be something special. Peering into the pickup bed, it was quite a buck. I quickly counted fourteen points, a basic ten with four extra points, and I would have bet, if I had any money, the outside spread was at least thirteen inches! Huge!
Back then I knew nothing about aging deer, but remembering what I saw, Donnie’s buck was likely a two or three-year old, an extremely old buck for a time, when most deer were shot as yearlings. Our friend beamed! From behind me I heard someone ask, “Whatdidya shoot him with?”
Donnie pointed to the gun rack above the seat of his pickup, “My new Remington Model 740 semi-automatic. It’s a .280 Remington. Hits harder than a .270!”
I was intrigued! Being a reader of anything I could get my hands on about guns and hunting. I knew the .280 Remington has been introduced in 1957 and it was based on the .270 case, but rather than the .277 diameter bullet, the .280 Remington shot a .284 diameter bullet or 7mm sized bullet, just like the 7×57 I wanted so badly! “Shoots a heavier bullet than the .270. Dropped my big buck in his tracks. Never moved a muscle!”
Up until that moment I had thought the .270 Winchester and .30-06 were the world’s greatest, best and finest hunting rounds. Particularly since up to that time my own serious deer rifle was a .30-30 Win. Maybe I needed to rethink my opinion.
Forget all about that .270
Beyond my friend, an occasional article by Jim Carmichael and a few others I did not hear or see much about the .280 Remington. Then in 1979, the .280 Rem made a re-appearance, but under a new moniker, the 7mm Remington Express. Only the name changed, nothing about the cartridge. Rumor had it some shooters confused the .270 for .280 rounds. A .270 fit easily into a .280 Remington; after all, it was based on the .270 case. Shooting .270 rounds in a .280 chamber, essentially fire-formed .280 cases, but with a .270 head stamping. The Remington Express name lasted a year or so before it again became the .280 Remington.
Move forward a few years. I started hunting with J. Wayne Fears. Fears, a fellow wildlife biologist from Alabama, was at the time a tremendously prolific writer with tremendous shooting and hunting experience. When he spoke, I listened. While he and I were hunting together on one of the ranches I managed in Texas; he suggested, “You need to shoot my .280 Rem. Once you do, I got a feeling you’ll forget all about that .270!” Those were pretty strong words because, to that point, I dearly loved my .270. Asked my favorite three rounds for hunting elk on down, my answer was “.270, .270, and .270!”.
Fears handed me a Remington Model 700 in .280 Remington and eight 140-grain soft-point shells. “Shoot three shots at 100 yards, then shoot three more at 200. Then shoot the other two at 400. It’s sighted in about 1 ½-inches high at a hundred, which should make it about 24-inches low at 400. The way I have them loaded, the bullet should be traveling at just over 2,900 feet per second.” I nodded and headed to the range of a few steps from camp.
From a solid rest, I put the first three shots essentially in a ragged hole at a hundred. After the barrel cooled a bit, I shot three more times at the 200 yards, again making one slightly larger ragged hole. Then I switched to the 400-yard target.
J. Wayne had a 3×9-40 variable with duplex crosshairs scope, one, unlike the one I had on my .270. I knew from shooting.270’s if I cranked the scope up to 9x, at 400-yards the distance between where thick vertical duplex crosshair turned to thinner, then from there where the vertical and horizontal crosshairs crossed should be 24-inches. Thus, I put the apex of the bottom crosshair exactly where I wanted the bullet to strike. Obviously, this was before we BDC reticles, adjustable turrets, and the like.
Solidly rested, I gently squeezed the trigger. That first shot hit the distant target in the middle of the 1-inch bullseye. My second shot was about two inches to the left. I had failed to hold correctly for wind. In my first shot, there had been no obvious wind. Mirage was going straight up. Moments later, as I was pulling the trigger on the second shot, the wind surprisingly kicked up several notches. Still, needless to say, I was impressed.
“Got a second .280 with me, in case you want to hunt with one this afternoon, or for that matter, the rest of the hunt.” Commented Fears.
“You gotta deal!” That afternoon I dropped two does in their tracks. Following morning I dropped a 185-pound wild boar where he stood and that afternoon shot a really nice, ancient 8-point whitetail. He crumpled where he stood. I was hooked.
Before Fears left Texas, I had a Remington Model 700 in .280 Remington coming my way. It arrived a week later; I scoped it and bought and also loaded several boxes of ammo. By season’s end, I used it to shoot a second and third whitetail. Those two also dropped in their tracks.
Embracing the .280
During the next several years, I used several different .280 Remingtons, including a couple more Remington model 700s, two custom rifles, and a Browning. I used those rifles with ammo in the 140 and 150-grain commercial Hornady loads and handloads with Hornady bullets. Regardless of whether the targets were elk, caribou, black bear, mule deer, pronghorn antelope, whitetails, or a variety of exotic deer and antelope, my .280 Remington never let me down.
One of my custom guns in .280 Remington was built for me by Bill Montoya from New Mexico (Bill was with the New Mexico Department of Game & Fish and eventually became their Executive Director, but also long a hunting partner). Bill restocked it and worked on the trigger, among other things. That particular rifle I used a lot back then. One year as part of magazine assignments (back then, I was on staff with numerous shooting and hunting publications and free-lance writing to many more), I hunted whitetail deer from just below the tundra in Canada to well into the deserts of Mexico. Using either Hornady ready-made loads or Hornady bullet handloads, I accounted for numerous really nice whitetails, as well as a couple of elk, mule deer, pronghorn, and whitetails. I dearly loved the .280 Rem!
Then for some reason, I started using a bunch of other calibers and rounds because of magazine and tv show assignments. My .280’s ended up in the back of my gun safe.
A couple of years ago, I decided it was time to again start hunting with my .280 Remington chambered rifles and to procure a couple of new ones; a Ruger No. 1 and a Remington Model 700. I contacted friends at Remington just before all the changes occurred with that fine, old company and made arrangements for a .280 Remington Model 700 Mountain Rifle, stainless. When it arrived, I mounted a Trijicon Tenmile HX 3-18×50 scope on it and procured a couple of boxes of Hornady Precision Hunter 140-grain ELD-X ammo.
At my range, I bore-sighted, then sent a round downrange at 75 yards. I made some slight adjustments, shot a second-round to make certain the adjustments were correct. I let the barrel cool, then zeroed it at 100-yards in a couple of shots. Again let the barrel cool, then loaded three Precision Hunters. I checked a range card Tim Fallon, with the FTW/SAAM, had made for me. I cranked the horizontal up 4 clicks, which with the Trijicon Ten Mile should put it dead on at 200-yards. I then turned the power to 12x, adjusted the parallax to 200 yards, and got into a solid shooting position. My first shot was a quarter-inch high and left of dead-center. My next two shots were almost touching my first, although to the dead center side of the target.
I knew sighted in that way to be dead-on at 200-yards, I could hold dead-on without making any additional adjustments on deer or pronghorn out to just shy of 300 yards. Three hundred yards, I would be about 8-inches low and about 20-inches low at 400, although I could quickly make turret adjustments to be dead-on at those ranges. However, I had no intention of shooting that far unless there was simply no way to get closer to whatever it was I really wanted to take.
A few days later, I shot a couple of really nice whitetail bucks hunting on the Hargrove Ranches. They were taken at 100 and 125-yards, respectively. Both of them, along with a 150-pound wild hog, dropped in their tracks using the Hornady Precision Hunter ammo.
Before the Hargrove hunt, I used my Remington/Trijicon/Hornady combination in Missouri hunting whitetails with IMB Outfitters; this for a “Trijicon World of Sports Afield” television show produced by Safari Classics. Last moment of the hunt, having passed on many bucks, looking for one, in particular, I dropped the extremely massive buck in his tracks at about 200-yards. He fell so fast; I thought he had essentially disappeared into mid-air.
This coming fall, I have several hunts planned for that same .280 Remington combination, including pronghorn, mule deer, and whitetails. I will let you know how those hunts finish! I know if I take care of things on my end, my .280 Remington/Trijicon/Hornady combination will certainly do what it is supposed to do and more.
It’s good to be once again hunting with an “old friend.” Our future together indeed looks bright!
Professional wildlife biologist/outdoor communicator, Larry Weishuhn, known to many as “Mr. Whitetail”, has established quality wildlife management programs on over 12,000,000 acres throughout North American and other parts of the world. He has hunted big game with rifle and/or handgun on six continents. Larry is a Professional Member of the Boone & Crockett Club, life-member of numerous wildlife conservation organizations including the Dallas Safari Club, Mule Deer Foundation, and Wild Sheep Foundation. He currently serves on the DSC Foundation Board of Directors, is one of three co-founders of the Texas Wildlife Association; is a member of the Legends of the Outdoors Hall of Fame and the Muy Grande Hall of Fame; he too, received the Zeiss Lifetime Achievement Award among many other honors.
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