The previous blog article I would say is a fair assessment of hunting progression. Based on the article I was in the first three stages all at the same time while in high school. During that era, as stated in my previous Favorites post, I hunted everything big game with the trusty 270 Winchester. It is a result of 30+ years experience by which I “methodically” profess the 270 Winchester as my favorite big-game hunting cartridge. Unfortunately, back then this was not so due to the mindset of early hunting stages. A new hunter typically doesn’t thinking methodically about shot placement and terminal ballistics.

Case in point, my first elk was a rag-horn bull that I shot 5 times with 160 grain Partition bullets from the 270 at a range of 80-120 yards. The first shot hit the bull in the chest behind the left shoulder. He leapt into the air, a classic lung hit response and lit running. I planted one more in the boiler room as he quartered away and began a long turn back to the right. The third shot was low and clipped his right rear leg below the knee and ripped across his belly and sternum. As he was now heading back the direction he had come I put the last two rounds into his right side. One bullet lodged at the base of his neck and the final shot entering the chest behind the right shoulder and stopped under the hide in the left shoulder.

I recovered 4 of the 5 bullets fired. Surprising to me was the recovery of the bullet that clipped the right rear leg. It had skidded across his belly and sternum and lodged in his left front leg below the elbow. This all occurred in less than 5-8 seconds, at last shooting light and after all the adrenaline was gone it was dark and my flashlight was dead.

It was a couple weeks later that dad and I went up to fill our late season cow tags. We encountered a bunch standing in oaks off the road. I pulled off and stepped to the other side of the road and put the cross hairs right on the cow’s shoulder. I learned my lesson from the weeks before, you gotta break bone if you wanna plant ’em quick. Not sure if it was the bullet impact or the actual leg bone breaking that was louder, but after the impact that elk just stood there and looked at me. A 160 grain bullet at 90 yards at a slightly quartering away and downward angle. The bullet entered the left side of her chest angling forward and down and breaking the right humerus.

She did finally go down, it only took one more shot and no flashlight was required. I’ll never forget how she just stood there looking at me, for what seemed like forever after I fired. When she did eventually turn her head and lunge to take that first step, it was a stumble step. The look on both our faces was likely one of shock and awe. After the experiences of that elk season I informed my dad I needed an “elk rifle,” a bonified “real elk rifle.” He informed me that I could hunt with his 375 H&H but I declined the suggestion, retorting that I needed an “elk rifle of my own.” I remember a slight grin come over the ol’ man’s face as he said, “How bout a poor mans 375?”

That winter the ol’ shop was a little warmer than it had been the previous winters. The accumulation of the necessary parts, barrel, action and nice piece of Black Walnut from the blank pile, chamber reamer, brass and dies and we were off.

The 35 Whelen

Ask five people how you pronounce the Colonel’s name and you’ll get ten different answers. Ask ten people to name a 35 caliber rifle cartridge and 80% will name the 35 Whelen, with the remaining 20% mentioning the 35 Remington, 350 Remington Magnum, 358 Winchester, or a 357 Magnum and quite possibly the 358 Shooting Times Alaskan.

Often considered a collaborative project by Colonel Townsend Whelen and John V. Howe (of Griffin & Howe fame) and sometimes rumored to be a solo (Howe) project of admiration and high esteem in honor of the Colonel. The one certainty we can be sure of is “Townie” (as he was known to his friends) was a rifleman, big game hunter and cartridge experimenter, i.e. a wildcatter.

He experimented extensively with the fairly recent military .30 caliber cartridge of 1906. The 30-06 case when formed is a blank hull with straight walls. So any sizing produces a neck of some sort to accommodate various calibers. Today we start with 30-06 and go up or down. Necking up the ’06 case results in cartridges like the 338-06, 38 (375) Whelen, 400 Whelen and the ever popular 35 Whelen. In 1922 the Griffin & Howe firm began building rifles for the 35 Whelen cartridge and the rest is history as they say.

Unfortunately it would take another 66 years before the 35 Whelen was legitimized. “Big Green” took it to SAAMI and made an honest cartridge out of the 35 Whelen in 1987-88. The Remington factory loads are typically a 200 grain soft-point (SP) or a 250 grain round-nose (RN) or SP projectile. The lighter projectiles typically churn about 2750 fps while the heavy 250’s generally push 2450 fps. Federal offers a 200 grain load in their Fusion line of ammunition that runs 2800 fps. These cheaper, more popular factory loadings are typical of what one might find on the shelf of just about any small convenience shop across the country that possibly sells ammunition. Premium ammunition suppliers have quite a few different offerings which are available online and sometimes the shelves of big box stores.

In all honesty I don’t shoot very much factory ammunition through my firearms. By “very much” I mean hardly any, by that I mean most of my firearms have never had a factory loaded round fired through their bore. That is where the 35 Whelen shines, as factory ammunition wasn’t available until 1988. By simply necking up military ’06 brass to .358″ caliber and loading with a 200-250 grain bullet shooters essentially possessed a “poor mans 375,” the perfect North American big game cartridge.

My Experience

Mule Deer

The following hunting season after the Whelen was finished I was eager to draw blood. Dad had some 225 and 250 grain Barnes originals. I had no idea how fast they were going but I knew there was quite a bit more movement behind the rifle. All summer I had been shooting .357 caliber, 158 grain Jacketed hollow-point and SP pistol bullets.

These pistol bullet practice/plinking rounds, at what I later learned was 1800-2300 fps, would leave four unlucky rabbit’s feet where once a jack-rabbit crouched. Christmas came early to the prairie dogs towns of south-central Wyoming, all decorated in red and green with tufts of fur tinsel hanging from the shrubbery. The aviary creatures of the desert were never far from where we ventured.

The familiarity of the firearm was developed, my confidence in its’ ability was honed and opening morning of deer season couldn’t arrive fast enough. However, when opening morning arrived I awoke late.

I suppose I spent too much time the night before pondering the trustworthiness of the 270 and whether the speedy 130 grain Antelope loads would be sturdy enough for a mature, heavy bodied, mountain Mule deer buck or would the tried and true 140 grainers be the ticket to fill a tag. But I have a “poor mans magnum” that I am more than confident with yet, I am still newly wed to the 270, would this not be cheating, hunting with the 35 Whelen? Of course I can’t leave the 270 home, what if the 35 Whelen fails me, sure it’s killed a truck load of jack-rabbits and prairie dogs but it’s untested in the big game fields.

All these thoughts and queries went through my head or you might just say I was more excited to hunt with a “new” cartridge than I realized and my body needed a little more time to charge. I was so frustratingly amped when I awoke that I grabbed both rifles but only one box of ammo. Fortunately the ammo was for the 35 Whelen so it was do or die for the untried rifle. It was a quick 20 minute trip to the hunting area and as I rounded a curve I noticed a small buck passing through a willow bottom headed to bed.

I pulled off at the next turn out, grabbed the Whelen, thumbed a handful of cartridges into the magazine and down the drawn I trotted. About 60 yards from where the buck was seen I relaxed my pace and began to look and listen for any indicators of where he may have slipped off to. Maintaining elevation on my side of the drawn, just in case he busted out the other side I began to scan the willows in the bottom.

When I cut his tracks he had been walking a cow path that meandered through the willows, cross the drawn and up the hill through the Service brush on the other side. Instinctively eyeing the trail I followed it across the gully and to my surprise the little forked-horn buck was standing on the path, in the shade of a Service bush, facing me with his head down hill. He had observed my entire trek almost from the moment I left the pick-up. Why he was still standing there is due to many reasons perhaps but the main reason in my mind was the Colonel had something to say.

At about 85 yards this was a chip shot, a distance at which I had dispatched many jack-rabbits off hand over the summer. I drew the Whelen to my shoulder, put the 4x crosshair on the bottom of his throat patch and squeezed the trigger. The 35 let out a roar and when I looked through the scope the little buck had somehow managed to invert himself as legs were now sticking up where his body has just stood.

From the time I awoke late until I returned home that morning it had only been approximately 80 minutes. When I pulled into the driveway my dad met me on the porch with a box of 270 Winchester ammunition in his hand. Extending it toward me he inquired, “Did you forget something?” I quickly responded, “Nope. I already got one.” I relayed to him the morning’s adventure and he said, “Dropped him like a pole-axed steer didn’t it?” I said, “More like the hammer of Thor.”

Elk

A few weeks later found me in late cow season again, Dad and I both drew some cow tags. Winter had arrived and the first real storm had dumped about 2 foot of snow in the high country and was still coming down. Where we were hunting, a long wide lodgepole covered piedmont extending off the west side of the divide in the Medicine Bow mountains, there was about 14″ of snow on the ground. Visibility would break for a period and one could see about a mile at which time we glassed up some elk on the south side of the ridge about a mile down the canyon.

As we got to the point we figured was due north of the elk we parked and I began trudging my way out an old logging road. It was nearly 3/4 mile to the edge of the canyon. Snow was coming down pretty steady and by the time I got to the canyon’s edge it had socked in some and I couldn’t see half way to the bottom. Walking the edge of the canyon along the rim for a little ways I decided to call it and make my way back to the road. I was more than mildly perturbed, so much so that I very likely audibly voiced my frustration with the situation…the snow and blowing snow, the cold, the no sign of elk and no elk, wet feet and the likes.

When suddenly I looked up and about 100 yards away, stood a cow elk peering at me from the edge of the timber over the sagebrush. I quickly rolled the Whelen off my arm bringing it to bare on the cow’s shoulder and touched it off. When I looked again she was still standing there. So I racked another round in the chamber, thinking to myself I must’ve pulled the shot and shot over. I bared down a little harder this time to steady myself and touched off another one. This time I saw her fold up like a newspaper.

As the sound of the second shot was reverberating up the canyon and back down the heard broke out of the timber and made for the edge. I paralleled and paced them as best I could reaching the brow as the last three animals were bailing off into Deep Creek canyon, never to be seen again this hunting season.

When I approached where I dropped the cow imagine my surprise to find two elk about 10 yards apart. Apparently the first elk dropped so quickly I never even saw it go down. I didn’t see the second elk slightly offline behind until the first one was out of the way. At that moment it appeared to still be the first elk so I fired again. Back in these days one could have in their possession a General tag and two limited quota tags so fortunately for me no harm no foul on the double kill.

An older gentleman from eastern Wyoming who had not been able to encounter anything close enough to get a shot at happened to have a primo recovery vehicle, a brand new Honda 4-wheeler. He was more than willing to help us recover the critters just so he could use it. We helped him and his wife break camp, get packed up and headed off the mountain before the weather really got bad.

My only regret that season was not using the Whelen for my bull. I used the 270 instead because it was lighter (by about 3 lbs), I used to do a lot of timber hiking in those days and besides, it’s ol’ faithful, do I really need any other reason?

Conclusion

What can I say about the 35 Whelen that hasn’t already been said a thousand times over. To me it is an extremely versatile cartridge able to shoot 125 – 310 grain projectiles. If one happens to have a .357-.358 caliber bullet swaging die, 115 grain 9mm projectiles can be bumped up and fired from the Whelen. That is 195 grains of projectile variation which can be utilized, I dare you to name another caliber or cartridge that has that kind of flexibility out side of a Large Big Bore (.401-.477 caliber).

The 35 caliber is considered the beginning of Big Bore calibers, a Light Medium Big Bore itself, it’s starting diameter is larger than many popular hunting caliber projectiles after they have struck the target and expanded. When I encounter folks who like to hunt large animals with tiny calibers I like to reiterate “that a 90 grain, 6mm bullet, correctly placed MAY do exactly what you expect it to do. Fully expand, deliver hydrostatic shock and penetrate completely through to leave a good blood trail. But I can guarantee you this 225 grain, .35 caliber bullet sure as hell ain’t gonna shrink.”

The ol’ 35 don’t make it out on many hunting excursions lately. The last time I hunted with it was about 7 years ago when I dropped a big cow elk during a Colorado 3rd season. During the winter when it becomes conducive to casting bullets I typically drop a hundred or so of each in 204, 246 and 263 grain gas-checked bullets. I also drop enough 157 grain .357 caliber gas-checked, semi-wadcutters for my 357 Magnum and the Whelen. Despite not using it for hunting it receives a far amount of cast bullet experimentation again lending to the versatility and flexibility of this great American cartridge.

For this reason the 35 Whelen makes my list of all-time favorite cartridges, because who says you can only have one favorite? The 270 Winchester sits atop the throne as my favorite big-game hunting cartridge whereas the 35 Whelen sits atop the throne as my favorite all-around hunting cartridge.

Interesting to know that despite being named after the Colonel, Whelen himself preferred the 400 to the 35 namesake. As far as is known the Colonel never had a 35 Whelen until later in his life when he was putting together data for his book “Why Not Load Your Own” published in 1957.

So check out the Colonel’s story below, a great read by a great writer.

Layne Simpson’s “The .35 Whelen Story”

With that being said there are no limits to the categories of “favorite” which an individual can come up with. Stay tuned for more favorites…as I see them.