.308 Winchester: A Hunting Workhorse

Learn About The Roots Of This Famed Cartridge

There was a time when young hunters were all about the .308, and they would argue with old heads who were religiously loyal to the .30-06. These days, if you’re running a plain ol’ .308 Winchester, you’re pretty basic. But I bet you bring home meat for the freezer.  What began as a full-on military cartridge for the post-WWII era became one of America’s absolute favorite, all-around, do-almost-anything hunting cartridges. It also went on to fulfill its military purpose as the 7.62 NATO.

So how did it go from a round that was specifically designed to extract easily from red hot machine gun chambers to the preferred game-getter for a good swath of hunters? Let’s find out. 

.308: The Cartridge

The .308 Winchester is a smokeless powder, rimless, bottlenecked rifle cartridge. Just as the .223 Remington is damn near identical to the 5.56 NATO, the .308 is almost identical to the 7.62 NATO cartridge, but not exactly (more on that later). 

The max case capacity of the .308 Win is 56 grains. The cartridge's shape was crafted to promote reliable feeding and extraction in bolt action rifles, semi-auto rifles, and full-auto machine guns under dirty circumstances. The .308 can handle 62,000 psi of chamber pressure, according to SAAMI. 

.308 Winchester (.308 Win) Specs

The History of the .308 Winchester

During the Second World War, the U.S. military ordered tests and trials on the .300 Savage cartridge to come up with something that delivered a similar ballistic performance to the standard battle rifle cartridge at the time, the .30-06 Springfield, but could fit in a short action rifle and wouldn’t knock the shoulder out of a mule. 

Frankford Arsenal came up with the T65 cartridge, which was really close to the .300 Savage, but with a less severe taper. The cases for the cartridge were made from cut-down .30-06 brass. Thanks to beefier brass, the new cases had slightly less capacity for propellant than the original .300 Savage. The experimental cartridge was then tweaked to get its ballistic performance closer to that of a .30-06. 

That was accomplished because the .30-06 was about 40 years old at the time, and ammo technology, including new propellants, had come a long way in that time. 

As A Hunting Round

But, the war ended before the product was finished, and the T65 languished for a little while until Winchester saw its potential for the civilian market and introduced it as a hunting round in 1952. Two years later, NATO adopted the T65E5 cartridge as the “7.62 x 51mm NATO” round in 1954. 

So while the 5.56 was created as a military version of the .223, the .308 and the 7.62 actually diverged from the same starting place — the T65 — and continued along separate lines of evolution. 

Out of the gate, Winchesters popular Model 70, Model 88, and Model 100 rifles were released in .308 and it wasn’t long before the round became the most popular short-action, large game cartridge in the entire world, let alone the U.S. 

In the intervening years, the .308 has been used for practically every type of combat, hunting, and target shooting that a rifle can be used for. It’s not perfect, for sure. It has a rainbow trajectory that will cause folks to balk if they’re used to faster, flatter shooting cartridges, especially long-range shooters. But the truth is, the .308 is a solid round for about 90% of the shots people take in the woods and on the range.   

But have no doubt, while the .308 was meant to replace the .30-06 and it got close, it didn’t get all the way there. Generally, a .308 will drop more than a .30-06 at long range because of its lower muzzle velocity with most bullet weights and has a bit less terminal force. With today’s bullets and propellants, the .30-06 still dominates. However, it’s still longer than the .308 and it still produced quite a bit more felt recoil. 

The .308 has been used throughout North America to take every size of game imaginable. Today, people will say it’s not enough for the largest game, just to hedge their bets, but if you’re in range and have good shot placement, the .308 can take down anything that walks on the continent. It’s taken large game all over the planet and has put in plenty of work in Africa. 

Despite the popularity of newer cartridges, tons of hunters still rely on the .308 in bolt guns and in semi-autos, for all kinds of hunting. 

Comparing the .308 Winchester & 7.62×51mm NATO

While both cartridges were born of the T65 experimentation, the cartridge Winchester released commercially in 1952 and the cartridge NATO later adopted in 1954 did not come out identical. 

They’re similar enough that they can be used in rifles technically chambered for each other, but commercial .308 ammo is usually loaded to higher pressures than 7.62 military ammo. If you go by SAAMI rules (the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers’ Institute), it’s completely safe to fire commercial .308 ammo in a 7.62 NATO firearm. But that doesn’t mean anything about performance. 

There have been arguments since 1954 about how the slightly different chamber dimensions, case thickness, and pressure differences affect the performance of one round or the other — and considering the number of variables involved, those arguments will likely continue until the end of time. 

Military History

When the U.S. waded into the Korean War in 1950, the military was, of course, still using the M1 Garand and the .30-06, which had both served so well in WWII, as the standard issue. 

Coming out of that war, in the late 1950s, both were replaced by the ill-received M14 rifle (though it still has its fans) chambered in the new 7.62 NATO. The M14 was essentially a redesigned M1 that was shorter, accepted detachable box magazines instead of an en-bloc clip, and was capable of full-auto fire. 

The rifle, as it was issued, wasn’t terribly accurate. It was heavy, bulky, and ammo capacity was limited to 20-round magazines, and like the M1, attaching any kind of optic was difficult. Plus, carrying that extra ammo in metal magazines instead of clips resulted in more weight per round – more importantly, this disparity was more acute compared to the enemy AK-47. 

A max load of 22 pounds of 7.62 ammo for the M14 counted out to 13 fully loaded 20-round magazines for a total count of 260 rounds. 

For an AK-47, a max load of 22 pounds gave you 12 magazines holding 360 rounds and about a half pound less in weight. 

So less weight, fewer magazines, and 100 rounds more. That’s a big difference.  

When the U.S. began to engage in combat in Southeast Asia, it was discovered that the M14’s wood stock didn’t stand up well to the rain, heat, and humidity of jungle warfare without warping and destroying accuracy. Fiberglass stocks were developed and issued, but it was too little too late. 

Before the 1960s were over, the M14 and 7.62 had been replaced by the M16 and the 5.56, which allowed troops to carry twice the ammo for the same weight as the M14, using a much lighter rifle that was capable of controlled, full-auto fire even though it was also limited to 20-round magazines for most of the war. (The M16 was originally conceived by Eugene Stoner as the AR-10 chambered in .308.)   

The M14 stuck around too, but in different roles that took advantage of the 7.62’s long-range capabilities over the 5.56. It was used as the basis for Mk 14 Enhanced Battle Rifle and the M25 Sniper Rifle which were used as designated marksman rifles and sniper rifles, respectively. These rifles used special .308 loads with heavier, more aerodynamic bullets with a better ballistic coefficient than ball ammo. 

The U.S. wasn’t the only military switching things up in the 1950s. Once the dust from WWII had begun to settle in Europe, militaries adopted the legendary Belgian FN FAL rifle in 7.62, which became the British L1A1 SLR. It was then adopted by the West Germans as the G1 rifle before they moved to the Heckler & Koch G3, also in 7.62. 

These guns all proved that the .308 was a viable military round and that it was not controllable in full-auto fired from a rifle. 

The 7.62 In Machine Guns

The .308/7.62 wasn’t out of the war in Vietnam when the M14 was phased out — thousands and thousands of 7.62 rounds in disintegrating belts were fired from the primary general-purpose machine gun in Vietnam, the infamous M60 machine gun. 

It, too, was heavy, bulky, and unrefined with the earliest guns experiencing frequent issues that troops attempted to solve and compensate for in the field, but it was what they had and they made it work most of the time. 

Today, the 7.62 NATO is used by the Heckler & Koch HK417, the SIG 716, the FN SCAR, the L129A1, the Colt Canada C20 DMR, and the LMT MARS-H rifles and their variants. 

While today’s hunters are moving more and more toward rounds like the 6mm Creedmoor, the 6.5 Creedmoor, and others, the old workhorse .308 is still around and still putting meat on the table for a whole lot of people around the world.