I love an excellent obscure caliber, and the magnum craze of the Sixties produced some severe contenders. The magnum craze wasn’t simply wrist-breakers or shoulder-thumpers. Typically it concerned reasonably powered small-game cartridges. A type of neat little varmint rounds was the .256 Winchester Magnum.
The .256 Winchester Magnum In-Depth
Growth began within the Fifties, however full-scale manufacturing and introduction didn’t happen till the Sixties. The cartridge traces its lineage to 2 very totally different cartridges. The primary aim was to take the previous, and pretty quaint, .25-20 Winchester cartridge and modernize it right into a higher-powered, longer-range cartridge. The second cartridge that influenced the spherical was its father or mother case, the .357 Magnum.
The .357 Magnum case was necked down to just accept a .25-caliber projectile however retained the case capability of the .357 Magnum spherical. This little spherical turned a varmint hunter’s dream cartridge. It packed fashionable energy with a small projectile, which made it straightforward to take small sport at longer ranges and to kill small sport with out damaging the pelt extensively.
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Breaking Down the .256 Winchester Magnum
The .256 Winchester Magnum packed a 60- to 75-grain projectile. Even with the case capability of the .357 Magnum, we obtained very delicate recoil from handguns and even milder recoil from a rifle. The cartridge had just a few choices for each.
From an 8.5-inch barrel, it reached spectacular velocities of two,350 ft per second. The Marlin Mannequin 62 Levermatic with a 24-inch barrel allowed the cartridge to achieve 2,760 ft per second. There weren’t a ton of different firearms.
Thompson produced a Contender pistol chambered for the cartridge. The best mannequin, to me, was the Common Firearms M1 Carbine, which was known as the M1 Ferret. A semi-auto, tremendous useful carbine firing this uber-fast, light-recoiling cartridge can be an superior mixture.
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Colt produced a really restricted variety of Pythons in .256 Winchester Magnum and a sequence of ‘Bluntline’ long-barreled Colt Single Motion Military revolvers. S&W produced a Mannequin Okay in .256 Winchester Magnum, however seemingly solely as a check gun. Reportedly, the cartridge didn’t work effectively in revolvers; case setback precipitated cylinder jamming.
Lastly, one of many weapons that premiered with the cartridge was the Ruger Hawkeye—not the rifle. Ruger took one among their Blackhawks and transformed it to a single-shot pistol with a swiveling breechblock. This appeared to offer revolver ergonomics with out the case setback drawback. Solely 3,075 of those weapons had been produced.
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Taking pictures the .256 Winchester Magnum
The place the .256 Winchester Magnum excelled was in flat capturing. Out to 200 yards, the cartridge offered little bullet drop. It’s flat-shooting, which is vital when searching small sport and predators.
With that mentioned, its efficiency maxed out at about 200 yards. Past that, the spherical misplaced numerous power and entered that inhumane realm for searching something bigger than a prairie canine. The cartridge promised effectiveness as much as wolves, so I may see why restricted vary was a priority.
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Winchester known as the cartridge a magnum, but it surely didn’t fairly have magnum efficiency. It’s a magnum in comparison with a .25-20, but it surely’s not a magnum like a .44 Magnum. This definitely didn’t assist its reputation.
The Decline of the .256 Winchester Magnum
The .256 Winchester Magnum started its decline pretty rapidly. It by no means turned overly widespread. Restricted firearms didn’t assist. Revolvers had been extraordinarily uncommon and didn’t carry out effectively. Single-shot pistols will at all times be a distinct segment possibility. The Marlin Mannequin 62 is nice, but it surely was the one lever-action chambering the cartridge and was by no means an especially widespread possibility.
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I do just like the M1 Carbine variant, however that wouldn’t save the .256 Winchester Magnum. The cartridge didn’t present superior ballistics and didn’t dwell as much as the Magnum namesake. At this level, intermediate cartridges just like the .223 Remington had been turning into widespread fairly rapidly, edging out the .256 Winchester Magnum.
The .256 Winchester Magnum didn’t supply a lot that the .223 Remington couldn’t do. Because it didn’t work effectively in revolvers, that area of interest wouldn’t assist exceed the spherical’s reputation. It’s additionally value noting that the Sixties had been an attention-grabbing time for searching rifles; the market was shifting towards semi-autos, and lever weapons had been being edged out simply barely.
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Winchester dropped assist for the cartridge in 1990. It’s nonetheless stored alive by handloaders, and each .25-caliber bullets and .357 Magnum instances aren’t troublesome to amass. If I can discover an M1 Ferret, you possibly can greatest consider I’ll discover ways to neck down cartridges. Till then, that is one other oddball that light into oblivion.
