J, I was thinking about this more. In the recent past you mentioned the desire for a 'general purpose arm that could serve plausibly as a scout type rifle', paraphrasing obviously.

And it occurred to me that in order for the 300 winchester magnum to offer any significant ballistic advantage over the 7.62x51 or .308 cartridge at distance the 300 is going to need a longer barrel. There may be folks here who have researched the 300 more than I have but a little cursory math seems to indicate a minimum length of 26-28 inches will be needed. Less than that and you are pretty much getting slammed in the shoulder just to make a big muzzle flash.



Well . . you know; unless you are up for getting your shoulder badly abused while I do some load development for you.