When Winchester Ammunition created .350 Legend ammo, they did so with a view to providing those straight-wall-using hunters out there with a cost-effective, accurate and easy to shoot option. The design process needed to result in a shell that was powerful enough to bring down whitetail deer quickly and cleanly, yet give you the user a nice, manageable amount of recoil – as well as, of course, being available for a reasonable cost.
In order to please everyone these .350 cases were manufactured to be under 1.8 inches and as you can probably guess from its name, I’m talking about a .35 calibre product. This is particularly relevant in states like Indiana and Ohio, as the rules there dictate that when shooting deer, the cartridges used need to have a minimum diameter of .357 and .350 Legend ammo meets that criteria.
A Range of Different Factory Loads
In order to make them versatile, which essentially relates to the available factory loads – Winchester released these popular cartridges with three very disparate levels of load, which included a 150-grain deer season shells with a polymer tip, a full metal jacket 145 grain offering over 2,300 feet per second (fps) and a 180 grain powerpoint for taking down large wild hogs.
As recently as of 2019, Winchester also introduced a couple of new load varieties, with an impressive 265 grain suppressed cartridge and a 160 grain cartridge denoted as Power Max Bonded.
Putting the .450 Bushmaster Out to Pasture
Whether it was intentional or not, .350 Legend ammo is in danger of putting the .450 Bushmaster line out of business – which in itself has enjoyed huge popularity for deer hunters wanting a straight-wall cartridge. .450 Bushmaster ammo is great for close-range shooting, however, many people are of the opinion that the recoil is rather on the excessive side of things.
In addition to this, Bushmaster ammo is usually really hard on the pocket, illustrating why the lighter-recoiling, less expensive .350 Legend cartridges have gained such a following.
For Me – It’s the Best Deer Hunting Ammo On the Market
As a seasoned hunter of deer myself, I can’t see any reason why anyone would buy other rounds that are available on the market. Last time I went out was in the Wichita area in Kansas and it was bitterly cold. I was the only one of our group that had the foresight to bring all .350 Legend ammo.
You’re probably going to be able to guess what I’m going to say next – I had the best success out of everyone and there were some pretty skilled deer hunters out with me that day – so I’m pretty sure it wasn’t my own shooting prowess that was the reason behind it.
Nope, it was the ammo I was using and I can tell you that I wouldn’t use anything else now in cold weather when hunting this kind of prey. There were quite a few of the party that day that ended up being convinced to switch too.
