What would you say is the sweet spot for rifle weight (including scope) when hunting with a 300 Win Mag? Heavy enough to handle the higher recoil, but light enough to haul around the mountain all day.
I know there’s muzzle brakes, silencers, and recoil pads to help, but curious what the consensus is when there’s so many light/ ultralight rifle options popping up on the market.
I find that a skilled shooter can shoot 25 ft-lbs of recoil well, but that’s somewhat of a max before performance degrades. That’s a skilled shooter, though. A more casual shooter will see a performance hit around 17 ft-lbs. Staying under 13 makes seeing a sight picture during recoil MUCH easier.
So if you pick your load and use a recoil calculator, you could find what weight you’d need to stay under that.
Then the next issue is the weight of the gun needed to sit still on bags when shooting. For that, I find a 7.5 lbs gun to be much better than 6.5, but 8.5 lbs doesn’t seem to change much until you get to around 10lbs when the difference is very noticeable.
All of that is to say, I like about a 7 - 8 lbs gun for a 300 win mag, and then pair it with a silencer or brake and a good pad and at that point it should shoot very well—really not much different than a much lighter cartridge that hasn’t been tamed for recoil.
I shoot 300 WM in a single shot TC Encore which without scope and fluted barrel is about 7 lbs. plus 21oz scope and 5 rounds of ammo in a butt stock pouch. So probably 8.5 lbs overall maybe a tick more with the sling. I find it quite easy to carry and a fast handling rifle. It does not have one of Jim’s nice pads but it does have a limbsaver. When hunting I never notice recoil in the excitement of it. On the bench where most bad habits form - some but I like the mental challenge of focusing on proper shooting and not flinching. If i can do it on the bench then second nature in the field. I shoot 165 gr copper Barnes to help a little bit with the recoil as well.