WEATHERBY ACCUMARK

One of the hardest hitting and most accurate rifles on the market is the Weatherby Accumark in .30-378 Weatherby Magnum.

Now, when you pronounce the caliber, it's not “thirty three, seventy eight”. It's “thirty, three seventy eight”. The difference is slight, but enough to make you sound like a moron when you get it wrong.

Okay, the rifle is a full sized, full stocked rifle with a good heft and balance. While the gun is not light, the rifle balances well and points very well. The barrel is a bull barrel but the deep fluting takes a lot of the weight out of it and it doesn't feel like your lugging around a bull barrel.
The rifle I tested was fitted at the factory with a muzzle break. The break is ported all around the circumference and does a fantastic job of reducing recoil. This does have two downsides. First is the noise... the rifle is extremely loud and if you fire it with the break on and without ear plugs... you will not do it a second time. Ever. The second problem is that if you fire from the prone in a dusty area... you could kick up a cloud of dust and sand so be sure to wear some eye protection.

Let's talk about the caliber. The .378 Weatherby Magnum is a ferocious cartridge and that is what this one is based on. They took that one, necked it down to .30 caliber and there you go... one of the hottest .30 caliber cartridges on the planet. It makes the .300 Win Mag look like a frightened little puppy. It's kicking out a 180 grain slug at 3420 FPS with a muzzle energy of 4676 according to factory specs. This is over 500 FPS faster than the good old .30-06 that everyone respects. This is a huge amount of power... the cartridge is just a monster.

With so much horsepower on tap, one would think this gun bucks like field howitzer. This isn't the case. In fact, I've fired .243 rifles that had more kick. No, I'm not exaggerating. This rifle kicks like a pussycat. It's amazing.

The trajectory is one of the flattest shooting you will ever pull the trigger on:

Muzzle Velocity: 3420. 100, 3209. 200, 3007. 300, 2815. 400, 2631. 500, 2455.

Muzzle Energy: 4623. 100, 4623. 200, 3575. 300, 3133. 400, 2736. 500, 2381.

Trajectory: Muzzle, -1.5. 100, 0.9. 200, 00. 300, -4.8. 400, -13.9. 500, -28.0.

This translates into almost twice as much energy on target at 500 yards than the .30-06, and a foot less drop. That's huge That's enough to mean the difference between a clean kill and a flat out miss. And when it comes to making that clean kill... this bad boy can do it all the way out to 1000 yards and slay an elk like it was pole-axed.

Now unlike a lot of cartridges that can be throttled up and down with different loads... this one doesn't do that so much. Factory loads go down to 165 grains and up to 200... that's great and all. But you pull the trigger on even a 165 grain load on small game like, say a white tail, and you will find out the pure definition of “blood shocked”. This rifle is meant for long range slaying, nothing less. So no, there is no light loads for this monster... it likes going full throttle, wide open, like a stick of dynamite. This is not a rifle for the timid.

It is also not a rifle for the Scrooges out there. It is a bit spendy. You are looking around 1800 for the gun and about a hundred bucks per box of shells. Yes, that's five bucks per bang. Now you are going to want to reload for this bastard. And that isn't too bad to do. About the same as reloading for a .300 Ultra Mag but the brass is more spendy. So usually the guy that buys the rifle will buy two or three boxes of shells to go with it, and reload that brass for the rest of their lives.

The hard part about the gun is picking the optics. You are going to want a Leupold VX-7, Zeiss, or Swarovski. The cheapest scope you should mount on this thing is at least a grand. Most any scope at that price range will do. The VX-7 is my personal choice. The rifle I tested used a Swarovski... it worked well enough. I zeroed it for 200 yards and was then able to bullseye everything in sight at all ranges. No problem.

I love this rifle.  My hell, do I love this rifle.