Remington .360 Buckhammer: Skirting The Rulebook

Hunting laws are a funny thing. As soon as a law changes, manufacturers are figuring how to design equipment to take advantage of the evolution of the rulebook. We've seen this for years in the world of muzzleloaders, as gunmakers build increasingly advanced firearms that don't even faintly resemble the frontstuffers of the pioneer days. And now we see it again in the .360 Buckhammer cartridge, just introduced to the market by Remington.

In an age where new flat-shooting, hyper-powerful cartridges are all the rage, the .360 Buckhammer looks ... old-fashioned. It's a simple straight-walled, rimmed cartridge that shoots .358-diameter bullets, using a necked-up .30-30 casing. Squint when you're looking at it, and it appears to be straight out of the late 1800s, the sort of cartridge that might have gone north with the Yukon Gold Rush.

So what's up? Why bring this out now?

The .360 Buckhammer is a response to US states legalizing straight-walled cartridges for deer hunting, or allowing them extended seasons—specifically, the hunting-mad Midwest states of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and Iowa, which previously only allowed shotguns during gun hunting season. Presumably, the fish and game departments are reasoning that a straight-walled cartridge such as .45LC or .44 magnum can hardly be more dangerous than a shotgun firing sabot slugs (which was another game law workaround ... ).

Old-fashioned straight-walled cartridges certainly have their place, but hunters are always looking for more hitting power. Winchester responded with the .350 Legend back in 2019, and now Remington has introduced a competitor.

The marketeers tell us Remington's .360 Buckhammer will hit almost 2400 fps muzzle velocity with a 180-grain bullet; obviously, speed drops with the 200-grain load, down to just over 2200 fps. Those are the only two options that Remington is loading right now, with Core-Lokt projectiles. Muzzle energy is 2299 lb-ft with the 180-grain load, and 2,183 lb-ft with the 200-grain load.

This cartridge is supposed to be a deer-smasher out to 200 yards, with 16 inches of drop at that point. It's said to have about the same hitting power as a .30-30, and indeed, Remington is marketing the .360 Buckhammer as a load for lever guns. A bold move indeed, as nobody's really taken the .30-30 head-on in 100 years, at least not successfully. The .35 Remington found its niche in Marlin's lever-actions, and the .303 Savage was common in the Model 1899 for the first decades of production, but neither was able to approach the mass popularity of the .30-30.

And neither will the .360 Buckhammer, most likely. But in the US, where a single state's change in game regulations affects hundreds of thousands of hunters, it can be very profitable to target a niche market such as straight-wall cartridges. Just look at Pennsylvania, where Remington's older pump-action rifles have seen huge sales for years, thanks to a ban on semi-auto deer guns. Allowing hunters the use of straight-walled cartridges in the Midwest, where deer season takes on religious fervour, will mean a massive spike in sales for guns chambered in these rounds.

Expect new Henry lever-action rifles chambered in .360 Buckhammer through 2023. See Remington's ballistics chart for the new round here.

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