doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion Classic & Custom Single Barreled Sporting Rifles @ doublegunshop.com .310 Cadet sporting use?

I just noticed that an online dealer (Joe Salter) has a box of .310 Cadet ctgs for sale. These are hard find in any form now but what interested me in these is that they are factory-loaded hollowpoints.

Was the .310 used much Down Under as a hunting ctg. after the release of the Cadet Corps rifles to the public? Were there other rifles made in this caliber?

Greener certainly offered it as a small game rifle, and even built box lock doubles in that calibre for blackbuck and the like. The doubles appear to have been mostly exported to India, and their uses are set out in this catalogue entry.



Some of them have been re-imported to the UK, with at least one with the engraving gold inlaid in the Indian (Kufari?) style.

Sir Gerald Burrard used this cartridge on blackbuck in India and regarded it as excellent for rabbits in the Cotswold hills where safe backstops abounded.

He doesn’t mention in his 4th edition of Notes on Sporting Rifles which type of rifle he used, although it was probably one of Greener’s nice little miniature Martinis. B.S.A. also chambered the Cartridge.

Interesting--Thanks!

I always assumed that the .310 was a near ballistic equivalent of the .32 WCF and used for the same purposes when it was in "civilian" hands.

Was the .310 considered a "rook rifle" ?

Back in the day, it seems to have been classed with the .300 Westley Richards Sherwood ( AKA .300 Extra Long when made by B.S.A. ) and the .298 Minex as a target/light game number rather than a Rook and Rabbit cartridge.

For Vintage Rook Rifle events I classify it (and the .32/20) as acceptable as a Rook and Rabbit calibre, but some purists could well disagree.

Greener’s 84 grain hollow point load at 1050 fps was ballistically almost identical to the .300 or .295 Rook cartridge.

As you say the .310 is very similar to the .32/20 both in ballistics and in how it was put to use. Neither would be considered a deer rifle today, but Great-Grandpappy harvested his venison with both.

I guess as 80 years old I qualify as "Grandpappy" and I killed several Columbian Blacktails with a .32-20 Savage bolt action (before I discovered that it was an illegal caliber in CA at that time!). During and after the Depression and WWII there were many country people in rural CA who had only one "real rifle" and it was often a .32-20 or 25-20. They got used for everything a rifle could be used for. I suspect that might have been the case with the.310 in OZ once the training rifles were surplussed.

Mike,

Fortunately the Blacktails had not read the game regulations either, and no doubt promptly expired on a well placed bullet arriving in a vital area.

Was that a Savage Model 23?

Since a Roe Buck weighs around 45 pounds, the .310 would efficiently kill one, and would be legal in some areas. Germany requires about 740 fp of energy at 100 meters, it would not qualify there now (but may have until the 1960s).
Mike

Parabola. it was a 23C with a Redfield receiver sight. MY grandfather's "coyote gun," although we had no coyotes then--all poisoned along with most other predators and scavengers: Your tax dollars at work....

The average Blacktail "meat buck" in our area ran around 80# with the blood and guts out. I wonder what they taste like now that their main food is wine grape vines and grapes?

I replaced the 23C with a much newer (1947) 23C that i still have and use. Slick little guns, although I much prefer a Utica-made Savage 219 .25-20 single shot that I also use.

Ross Seyfried wrote some articles in Rifle about this class of cartridge. He touted there ranging ability and their usefulness for small game up through small deer and antelope. He considered the 300 Sherwood to be the best tof the lot by a stretch, as I read the articles due to bullets and higher velocity.

In the "crowd" I run with, Ross Seyfried's advice is considered to be the "Gold Standard" and he is correct about the 300 Sherwood; but the 310 is much more available to we peons.
Mike