Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Express Rifles and Big Bores Only Question for the .400 Whelen Crowd

The story is I walked into a local gun store a week or two ago and that was on the shelf for next to nothing. I am a .35 guy so it had to follow me home. Planning to shoot it this week.


I actually just sold an FN (commercial) .270. This one is staying as-is. Had it come along six months ago it might have been in serious trouble

Looks like a good catch,MR. I've been following the thread and noticed this rifle showed up. May not be a .400 but pretty useful round, it seems to me.

Thanks!

.400s are fun but hard to beat the overall utility of a .35. Pretty small number of scenarios where I would feel under-gunned with a .35 Whelen shooting a good bullet.

I know one fellow from here went to Africa with his 400 Whelen.

What's everyone's tally of big game they have with the 400? Bullets and experiences.

IIRC, Elmer's was 17 or 18 big game animals, which has been a goal of mine to eclipse, although it's never included elk, moose and anything substantially over 300 pounds.

So far just three whitetails with three 360 Northforks.

Two caribou and one moose with mine. Looking forward to adding deer, black bear, elk and antelope to the list.

Nothing like wading into a good forum discussion 21 pages deep but have read the majority of it and I am liking the idea. I have a LH M70 Classic that is begging to be rechambered and I have a line on a barrel that is 411 groove but 403 bore. Anybody see any issues with the 403 bore in a 400 Whelen?

I don't see an issue with that depth of rifling but I'm certainly no expert in those matters.

Confirmed same with my smith. Barrel is incoming.

My only recommendation is to get some dummy rounds put together and see how they feed in your action BEFORE having it rebarreled. May save some headache down the road.

That's not a bad idea.
Has anybody played with the 326 or 377gr Hammer bullets yet?

Anybody have a couple of dummies they want to "rent out"...I need to send them to the smith to check feeding after chambering. I will pay shipping both ways plus a rental fee. Using Petrov/G&H reamer.

Do you have any bullets lined up yet? I would be happy to send some fired brass if you have dies and bullets. Otherwise, all I have on hand other than cast are 360 NF. Be happy to send some dummies of those if you want, just let me know your max OAL. You can PM your address and any details on the dummies if you want.

Same goes for anyone else working on a build. I will gladly send some fired cases or dummy rounds set up to your preferred OAL. A few dummy rounds early on would have saved me a lot of grief.

Still not happy with the feeding on mine to the point where I am seriously considering re-barreling this action to something else (probably 9.3x62 if they feed well) and (re)building my .400 on a different action. I have a Pre-64 model 70 action that will be here tomorrow. If it feeds well from the go it may be a simple barrel swap, refinish the steel to match and then find an appropriate stock. I have a couple of 'smiths that are willing to look at it prior to doing something drastic, but the possibility of spending hundreds of dollars and not improving anything is real. Still waiting on my Hawk bullets to see if they make a difference but I think the feeding issue is mainly in the case design. I tried some of my .30 Gibbs cases (basically an improved-improved .30-06) and they didn't feed well. Standard .35 Whelen feeds great with 250 spitzers so anything '06 based from .35 down that is not improved would be a candidate for the rebarrel if the 9.3 won't feed.

After MANY hours of screwing around this thing is finally feeding everything from a super short 210 XTP to a 400 cast with a big ‘ol meplat. Not ready to hunt Cape buffalo with it but ready for a lot of range time till I am 100% confident in it.

Thanks to MedRiver for the fired cases...I loaded up some 0.411 Hammer 326gr set to 3.290" length. Will send these off to my smith to check feeding and should be in business. CH4D had a seater and a neck sizer only...I put the full length sizer on backorder but they said 18-24 months. Will have to figure a solution to that one along the way.

Looks great. Looking forward to your build progress!

Med, try a stronger magazine spring. Test this out first, by doubling 2 magazine springs and see if it fixes it (for test purposes only)

Take that stoopid stopper thingy oughtta the box.

The heft of these rounds is too much for a stock mag spring, the recoil as well.

Never thought to double the mag spring. Interesting, will try that out so see what it changes.

I have been running rounds through it every day and am 100% satisfied with its feeding with bullets I want to hunt with. Got some 400 Hawks the other day and they fed very well. I will occasionally stuff a 210 Hornady but that just provides good practice for un-stuffing a stuff-up

Hoping the good feeding of heavier bullets holds true after some range time. Between the short days of winter, a solid work load, mountain lion season and filling some late season elk tags I haven't got to play much at the range.

I went .410 bore on my wildcat cartridge, so I could simply neck up 9.3x62 brass with no other fiddly bllsht. Identical ballistics to a 400 Whelen. The 350 grain a-frame is .410 and I like my bore to match my bullets. I practiced lots with .410 pistol bullets as well.

What I've found, is the stopping power on big rut-raged bulls, was instantaneous, using the 350 grain A-frames. Compared to bulls shot with 9.3x62 or 358 winchester, where they'll stay upright and need a second shot to tip over.

The .410 swift A-frame expands much wider than .358 and 9.3 bullets, so it's not surprising. Here's my thoughts:

https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbt...41-vs-358-9-3-on-bull-moose-observations

41 caliber cartridges are in a different fkn league than medium bores. I've since moved on to the 416 Ruger. Boxes of dgx bonded stuff everywhere, convenience is too nice to pass up. The stuff clocks 2455 fps from my 22" barrel.

Recovered 350 grain 41 compared to 300 grain 9.3. Both A-frames, both moose shot on camera:

Great pictures Mainer!