Thoughts on .300 SAUM?

[Guest 70below]

Just curious what your thoughts or experience with .300 Remington SAUM is? I know that SAUM will probably fade away in time, and ammo is a bit hard to come by. The reason I ask is that someone has one that they want to trade for a rifle of mine. He has a Remington 700 LTR with a Nikon 6-18x scope with side focus and target turrets, about 150rds through it. Has a bipod, and 4 boxes of factory ammo 190gr SMK's. I've been building my interest in long range shooting, and started reloading for my '06 for that purpose. Even though the SAUM may cost a bit more to shoot, I figure my primary will be my '06 and the SAUM will shoot a bit more seldom unless I just really fall in love with it. What do you think the value of the Rem 700 LTR in SAUM with the nikon and ammo is? Thanks!

[Guest Mugster]

On the nikon scope, I just bought a 6-18 buckmaster with the mil-dot system, 1" tube on a sale at midway a few months ago. If that is the scope thats on it, its a real good scope. I shot mine yesturday for the first time and was impressed. I was able to cut a 3.4" 5 shot group at 300 yards with a remington r-25 in .308 using 130gr speer handloads. Popped a few clay pidgeons too. Its clear and the parallax knob works ok. I had to adjust focus between a hundred and 300, but I need to shoot it 5 or 6 more times before I call a verdict on the parallax adjustment.

On the SAUM round, I've never shot one. Some say that a .30-06 can compete with a 7mm rem mag with a belted case. I don't think that's accurate from looking at actual chronographed data. From looking at the reloading charts, it would seem the SAUM can and looks like it might do better with 155-165gr bullets which is the forte of the 7mm. Looks like case capacity is an issue. Most of the high loads look to be compressed which I don't personally like.

I dunno. Personally I'd stick to a .300 win mag for heavy bullets (165-200) or a 7mm rem mag for that (150-168gr) with an actual belted case and plenty of capacity to fool around with. But thats me. I like the belt for safety, and I like the capacity. Dunno if RSAUM has a belt, it might.

Rem 700 is a solid action. I'd check the throat erosion on something like that before I bought it or traded for it.