Category: Ammo
It’s getting more and more difficult to remember just how much magic was radiated by the word “magnum” back in the magnum-mad 1960s. It meant big belted cases, blinding speed, and vaporized animals at impossible distances.
How, then, did the diminutive, mild-mannered .256 Winchester Magnum ever come by the name? Let’s be realistic: A 60-grain bullet at 2,750 fps is not exactly traveling at the speed of light—and that’s what you get on a good day. Of its more famous .25-caliber brethren—Savage, Roberts, Weatherby—it shades only the .25-20 WCF, and that certainly is not setting the bar very high.
Usually, the magnum name was attached to cartridges that were a more powerful version of a cartridge that already existed.
The .44 Magnum, for example, is simply a longer, more powerful .44 Special. Well, back in the 1930s, Smith & Wesson decided the .38 Special needed juicing up and came out with a longer-cased version they called the “.357 Magnum.” Purists will note that it simply could have been called the “.357” as no other cartridge by that name existed, but S&W wanted the magic, and the .357 Magnum delivered it.
The .357 Magnum case intrigued cartridge designers who were convinced it could be necked down into something useful.
Remington decided it could be the basis for a hot .22 to use in handguns, while Winchester leaned toward .25. The result was two cartridges that appeared almost simultaneously around 1961: the .22 Remington Jet and the .256 Winchester Magnum. Like most children, the .256 took its father’s name, and just like so many offspring of famous men, it was a disappointment.
The .256 Win. Mag. was intended as a handgun varmint cartridge, but bottleneck cartridges don’t do well in revolvers, so Ruger brought out its single-shot Hawkeye pistol chambered for it, made 3,300 of them, and called it a day.
Marlin adopted the .256 Win. Mag. and redesigned its short-throw Levermatic rifle to accommodate it. It was called the Model 62, and Marlin turned out about 8,000. Universal Firearms offered it in the semiautomatic M1 Carbine, and Thompson/Center has offered it in limited quantities of single-shot Contender pistol barrels.
In the 57 years since, writers (including yours truly) have had a field day explaining why the whole idea was doomed from the start.
In my own case, such hindsight has been rather rueful because I fell in love with the Levermatic Model 62 and the .256 Win. Mag. cartridge the day the 1964 Marlin catalog arrived in the mail. The word “magnum” hooked me, and the modern, streamlined look of the Model 62 seduced my imagination. Truth to tell, I still have that catalog, and when I open it to that page, I still get that tingle almost 60 years later.
Like many rifle lovers who reach a certain age and level of financial ability, I went looking for a Model 62, eventually found one, prevailed upon Leupold to make me a slightly retro 3X scope, found a period-original George Lawrence leather sling, and began the long road to securing a supply of ammunition.
Winchester produced its last run of .256 Win. Mag. around 1993, and brass disappeared from the market shortly after.
Although a few independent makers have flirted with it since, including Jamison Industries (the successor to B.E.L.L.), most of us have had to acquire the wherewithal to turn common .357 Mag. brass into .256 Win. Mag. You can also use .22 Jet brass, but I found it cheaper and easier in the long run to use .357 Mag.
In the process, I learned a lot about fashioning one cartridge from another. Most valuable, perhaps, I learned that one has to be very careful how hot you load the .256 Win. Mag. because the Levermatic is not blessed with a stout extractor and cases stick quite easily.
In other words, this so-called magnum cannot even be juiced much beyond its already modest factory ballistics.
What’s in a name? In this case, not much. Taken together with the rifle, though, they make a nice walking-around combination that does fine work on marauding armadillos. And you know what? The armadillos never realize the .256 Win. Mag is not really a magnum.
My dad wasn’t loyal to any one rifle manufacturer. He shot them all, and he shot them well. At the tail end of his hunting career, though, he decided he liked Winchesters.
Come deer season, the first rifle out of his gun safe was a Winchester Model 70 Featherweight chambered in 7×57. After he passed away this spring, my brothers and I divvied up dad’s Winchesters. I wound up with the 7×57.
Designed by Paul Mauser of Mauser fame, the 7×57 traces its origins all the way back to the late 1800s. The Spanish Army was the first to take a chance on the new cartridge, and they loved it.
So much so that they awarded Mauser the Grand Cross of the Spanish Military Order of Merit for his efforts. The cartridge’s flat trajectory and ability to shoot heavier bullets, along with its mild recoil, endeared it to soldiers and sportsmen alike.
Along with the rifle, I also inherited a couple of boxes of my dad’s handloads, complete with notecards detailing each load’s particulars. He was getting great velocity out of his 7×57, shooting over 2,800 feet per second with a 140-grain bullet, all with that mild recoil.
That kind of performance is perfect for the whitetail that I hunt close to home here in Oklahoma, and I looked forward to carrying my dad’s rifle into the deer woods.
The Legend of the 7×57
But I make annual trips to the Oklahoma panhandle for mule deer and elk, too, and both of those species are significantly bigger than the whitetail close to home.
Even the whitetail in the panhandle can weigh 300 pounds on the hoof. I was fairly certain the 7×57 could handle the whitetail and mule deer, but I didn’t think I’d chance it for elk. Besides, I have rifles chambered in other calibers that are more suited to that task. No sense in asking a ball peen to do a sledgehammer’s work, right?
About the time I was having that thought, I was reading the biography of a hunter in Africa named Walter Dalrymple Maitland Bell, a man who carried a 7×57 not for whitetail or mule deer or elk, even, but for elephant. Here I was debating the cartridge’s effectiveness on mule deer, and Bell was using it on elephant. Never has my manhood been called more into question.
Also known as WDM, a better option than Walter Dalrymple Maitland, I’m sure we’d all agree, Bell was born in Scotland to wealthy parents and a life of privilege.
But he was destined for adventure. He was riding the high seas the year he became a teenager and hunting lions for the Uganda Railway by the time he could get a driver’s license. The gold rush sent him to North America and the Boer War brought him back to Africa, where, after the war ended, he finally heeded his life’s calling and became an ivory hunter.
In so doing, he earned himself another sobriquet, and it may well be the coolest nickname of all time: Karamojo Bell.
Karamojo Bell & The Bell Shot
Bell made a name for himself by regularly walking into a parade of elephants with nothing but his 7×57, a John Rigby and Co rifle, and shooting either the herd’s bull or its matriarch, and then, as cool as a cucumber, picking off the rest of the herd one by one as they ran circles in confusion.
Having made a habit of dissecting the elephants he killed so that he could study the structure of their skulls, Bell’s research led him to conclude that the surest way to dispatch an elephant was with an oblique shot from the rear, angling his bullet through the back of the neck and up into the brain.
Eventually, this became known as The Bell Shot. You know you’re a serious rifleman when the hunting world names a shot after you. The man killed over 1,000 elephants in his career, more than three fourths of them with the 7×57.
Bell’s calm in the midst of pachyderm panic, his prowess with a rifle, and his fondness for the sweet shooting 7×57, earned him a reputation as a larger-than-life adventurer, and rightfully so. He absolutely deserves every ounce of respect he’s been given for his exploits on the Dark Continent.
The man in me just wishes he had done it all with a different cartridge.
OUT OF PRINT, BUT ONE HOT NUMBER
The “out-of-print” .256 Winchester is an excellent performer in John’s T/C Contender.
In the early 1960s there was a great deal of interest in long-range, small-bore handgun cartridges. Remington introduced the radical (at the time) XP-100 bolt gun chambered in .221 Fireball. Smith & Wesson contributed the ill-fated .22 Jet, and Marlin brought out a modernized lever-action rifle chambered in .256 Winchester Magnum.
Both of the latter two cartridges were based on the .357 Magnum necked down. The .256 was at least prototyped by Colt — in 1963 they produced a brochure showing four .256 sixguns — a Colt SAA, a Buntline Special and a Python, all priced at $125 each, plus their $89.95 .357 Magnum. I have no idea how many, if any, were actually produced and sold as they simply couldn’t get it to work right; case setback with the cartridge case jamming the cylinder was the problem.
Marlin’s Model 57 .256 Levermatic was a modernized, box-magazine short-throw levergun.
Ruger Hawkeye, Marlin Levermatic
Ruger made the .256 work in their single-shot Hawkeye “revolver.” Instead of a cylinder, Ruger went with a single-shot breechblock fitted to a Blackhawk frame. The cartridge is a good one, however, the Marlin Model 57 Levermatic did not go over well perhaps because it was too modern-looking a departure from the traditional Marlin levergun. The Levermatic was hammerless and designed with a short action and very short lever throw which takes some getting used to for those of us raised on standard (and far smoother) Marlins and Winchesters.
Although the operation of the action is nothing to get excited about, the Levermatic shoots quite well with the .256 — a modernized version of the old .25-20. It was made to be scoped and gives me excellent results for three shots at 50 yards using the Speer 75-gr. JFN over 14 grains of IMR 4227 for just under 2,300 fps and a group of 5/8″. The Hornady 60-gr. JSP over one more grain of the same powder gives the same muzzle velocity and the same accuracy.
John’s preferred powder? Alliant 2400.
John’s Contender Concoctions
Thompson/Center also chambered their Contender in .256. Mine has a 10″ bull barrel and is topped with a Burris 4X LER, my scope of choice. I do not know of anyone offering .256 Winchester brass today, however, I’ve always tried to keep a good supply of all pistol brass on hand and have often purchased brass found at reasonable prices long before I ever had any gun to accept it.
Since the .256 Winchester is based on the .357 Magnum case, I surmise you could make brass from the latter, but I’m guessing cases made thusly would need to be inside necked reamed. Fortunately, I have enough brass so this should never be a problem. Dies are available from RCBS and with the .256 being a bottlenecked case, only a full-length sizing and seating die are required.
My powders of choice for the .256 are the same two I use for most handgun loads — Alliant 2400 and IMR 4227. Hornady, Sierra and Speer all offer .25 caliber bullets in the proper weight range (60-75 grains). Accuracy is excellent with all loads I have used with three shots at 45 yards. They all average under — well under — 1″. Factory loads from Winchester use a 60-gr. JHP that clocks out just under 2,500 fps from the 10″ Contender barrel and places its shots in 7/8″.
My favorite loads include the Hornady 60-gr. JFP over 14.0 grains of 2400 for 2,440 fps. One grain more gives me just over 2,500 fps with both loads grouping 5/8″ for three shots. The most accurate load I’ve found is the Speer 75-gr. FP over 14.0 grains of 2400 (3/8″ at 2,250 fps).
John’s favorite bullets for the .256 Winchester are the Hornady 60-gr.
FP, Speer 75-gr. FPFN and Sierra 75-gr. JHP.
Bottleneck golden oldies: The .256 Winchester (right) is a modernized version of the .25-20.
Missed Opportunities
The plan behind the .256 Winchester was to come up with a 2,500 fps small-bore sixgun load. It was an excellent idea. It’s unfortunate the engineers on the project did not do all the homework necessary to make this cartridge work in a revolver chamber. My friends Gary Reeder and J.D. Jones learned how to make bottlenecked cartridges work in sixguns, so you have to wonder why the original engineers couldn’t figure it out.
The Contender-chambered .256 Winchester is an excellent choice for small game and varmints as is the Marlin Levermatic (which is certainly more powerful than my old Marlin 1894 .25-20). The cartridge itself is quite potent for such work and — combined with its accuracy potential — gives everything needed.
This cartridge should not have died.
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Blasting wild pig with .44 magnum
