Belt up! A shooter's top 10: the best belted rifle cartridges ever developed.

To start off, let's get a couple of things straight: Our purpose is to name the 10 best belted cartridges. Not the 10 most powerful. Not the 10 most accurate. The 10 best. When you say "belted," most people think "belted magnum," with the implication of awesome power. In some cases, it is true. In others, not The presence or absence of a belt does not make a cartridge any more or less powerful nor, for that matter, any more or less accurate.

There are some good ones, some great ones, and the truth be known, some truly dreadful ones. Compiling a "10 Worst" list would be, in some ways, easier. Another time, perhaps.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

So what are my nominees?

1. .375 H&H

This cartridge has been known by several names since its introduction in 1912. It is probably the best-known product ever to leave the venerable shop of Holland & Holland in London. It revolutionized not only bolt-action rifles, but the shape of big-game hunting.

The .375 H&H was not the first belted cartridge, but it is the one that set the standard for others. Since then, it has fathered hundreds of other belted cartridges, as well as being wildcatted itself. Yet the original is still the standard, and for very good reason.

The .375 H&H is not the most powerful, but it is adequately powerful and its 300-grain bullet gives fantastic penetration. It is very accurate and feeds like a dream from any magazine, and it never ever sticks in the chamber. For a dangerous-game cartridge, these are serious virtues. Yet, loaded with lighter bullets, it is a fine long-range performer on plains game.

2. 458 LOTT 

This is the cartridge Winchester should have made instead of the .458 Winchester, being merely the latter extended by three-tenths of an inch. The extra three-tenths provides enough extra powder capacity to make this a modem, belted, magazine-rifle equivalent to the renowned .450 Nitro Express.

It delivers a 500-grain bullet at 2,250 fps, in a cartridge with no pressure problems, that feeds and extracts easily every time, and marries the advantages of a straight case to the benefits of headspacing on the belt, heading off any potential problems with a rim. Only my reverence for the .375 (and fear of lynching) kept the .458 Lott out of the number-one slot.

3. 257 WEATHERBY

This is the cartridge hot-rodder's hot-rod cartridge. Designed by Roy Weatherby in 1944, one of his first designs based on a shortened, blown-out .375 H&H case, the .257 has had its ups and downs--not least of which were the overblown claims of Weatherby himself.

Ignore them. Look at the actual ballistics and keep good bullet performance foremost in your mind, and the. 257 Weatherby will deliver the goods on any animal up to the size of zebra, wildebeeste, or caribou. It requires a long barrel and open territory, but with a 100-grain bullet you have a long-range deer rifle without peer; load a tough 120-grain bullet and you can hunt bigger stuff. The original. Accept no substitutes.

4. .300 WEATHERBY

The .257's bigger, longer brother, the .300 Weatherby is the full-length .375 H&H case necked down and blown out, with the trademark Weatherby double-radius shoulder. It was one of the earliest .30-caliber magnums, and is still the best--more powerful than most, as accurate as any, and it can be packaged in a hunting rifle of reasonable weight and handiness without undue recoil or muzzle blast.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

In the 1960s, big-game hunters took the .300 Weatherby all over the globe and hunted everything from rhinos in the reeds to Marco Polo sheep at 15,000 feet. It was asked to do some things it should not have been asked (rhinos, for example) but by and large it managed to put them down, keep them down, and keep its ill-advised owners alive.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

For more temperate types, load it with a 200-grain bullet at 2,850 fps, and you have a rifle that will do anything in North America that needs to be done, and anything in Africa short of Cape buffalo and elephant. With a good 165-grain bullet, it is a long-range screamer.

5. 7 MM REMINGTON

More than any other cartridge, the 7mm Rem. Mag seduced a whole generation of hunters with the siren call of high velocity.

Since its introduction in 1962, the 7mm Remington has been chambered in more factory rifles than anything in its class, and it is still going strong. It is now a standard hunting round in the same way as the .30-06, .270 and .308, used by hunters who are not rifle nuts simply because it does the job and does it well. Ubiquitous to the point of boredom, the 7mm Remington will be around when the hotter 7mms are distant memories. Yawn.

6. .338 WINCHESTER

In this bore diametet, I was torn between the .338 and Weatherby's more powerful .340, and finally tilted to the .338 for many of the same reasons as the 7mm Remington. It is a cartridge with a particular niche that performs its job very well.

The .338 has largely displaced the .375 H&H in Alaska as the standatd bear guide's back-up rifle, partly because of price and availability, but not ignoring the fact that on bears it will do almost everything the .375 will do. This is not true of Cape buffalo or elephant, but there are no Cape buffalo or elephant in Alaska.

7. .358 NORMA 

The .358 Norma arrived in 1959, a year after the .338. While it could out-slug the .338 ballistically, it could never compete with it in America because of availability. The .358 Norma is the standard 7mm-.338 case necked up to .358 and fits a standard action. It loves 250-grain bullets and can be loaded with 300 grainers as well.

The .358 was originally chambered in the fine Schultz & Larsen rifles of the 1960s, and became a standard moose cartridge in Sweden, where it is still enormously popular. For bear and moose, you could not ask for better. I once knocked a Texas nilgai right off its feet with one. What more can I say?

8. .300 H&H

Essentially the .375 H&H necked down, the .300 came along in 1925. As originally loaded, it was a souped-up .30-06, and pretty much remains that to this day. But, hey, a souped-up .30-06 is a top-notch cartridge. With recoil substantially less than the .300 Weath-erby, and accuracy second to none in its class, the .300 H&H belongs on any "10 Best" list

9. .495 A-SQUARE

This one's is a straight-case .500 based on the .378 Weatherby case-essentially a scaled-up .458 Lett, It fires a 600-grain bullet at 2,150 fps, bringing .500 Nitro Express ballistics to a modem cartridge that will fit in a magnum bolt action without pressure, feeding, or extraction problems. Standardized by A-Square, with factory rifles, ammo and brass available, it literally muscled its way onto this list.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

10. AND IN 10TH PLACE ...

... we have a 10-way tie:

The 7x61 Sharpe & Hart (which inspired the 7mm Remington), The .275 H&H (which really inspired the 7x61 Sharpe & Hart), The .224 Weatherby (the cutest belted cartridge ever), The .416 Weatherby (which finally gave a legitimate purpose to the execrable .378 Weatherby case), The .308 Norma (what the .300 Winchester should have been), The .375 JRS (The .375 H&H blown out adds power while retaining most of the original's virtues), The 6.5mm Remington (a neat idea with no takers in a horrible rifle), The .270 Weatherby (a beautiful blonde wallflower), The .240 Weatherby (runner-up in the cuteness stakes), and The 400/375 Belled Nitro Express (H&H). (The very first belted cartridge, introduced in 1905. No one else has ever heard of it, either.)