I'm looking to add a barrel to my T/C Contender to use to hunt whitetails in the woods of Pennsylvania. A bid deer in the area where I hunt will go 160 pounds live weight and most are smaller. A long shot through the woods is 100 yards.

Based on what I've read on line, if I want to go with a 10-inch barrel (and I do for convenience sake), I should be looking at either the .30 Herrett or the .357 Herrett. Do any of you have any experience with either of these cartridges and if so, which would you recommend for my purposes and why?

How about a 357 maximum? I have a 10" barrel and it shoots awesome and works great for deer at woods range. Easy to load (no brass forming!!!)and you can shoot 38's and mags to practice I shoot 180 grain XTP's/2400 with good results.

I'd personally choose the .357. The bullets are "pre-expanded".

When I started shooting there was a lot of writing in the magazines by Steve Herrett and Bob M??? (can't remember his last name). They were hunting antelope and such with 10" Contenders. I bought a 10" Contender barrel in .30H and used it in IHMSA competition. I also have experimented with a 10" in .357 Herrett.

Making .30H brass is not too hard and for hunting you don't need a lot of brass anyway, but it does take some effort to make and trim the brass. You can make the brass easy enough from .30-30 cases- run them through the size die, trim off a lot of length and fire-form them. I did a lot of load workup with 110 through 125 grain bullets and didn't have much success. I switched to 165 grain bullets for IHMSA and had good accuracy with them. Contenders can have different twists depending on age of the barrel and some don't do well with bullets over 165 grains. Later on I played with 135 grain "single shot pistol" bullets and had good accuracy with them. They weren't heavy enough for IHMSA though. In a scoped Contender this is a fairly mild cartridge to shoot.

.357H is very similar in terms of brass and reloading, but much different to shoot. For some reason the larger case and heavier bullets make this cartridge a real bear. It gives serious recoil and muzzle blast to the 10" Contender.

There are a lot of modern cartridges worthy of consideration that have come out since the days of the Herretts. Not that I have anything against the Herretts but a new buyer could consider everything that is available. Even .30-30 is worth consideration. Off the top of my head there is .300 Whisper and various JDJ cartridges, but .30-30 and the JDJ's work better in 14" barrels. Since the Contender has much less mechanism involved even a 12" or 14" barrel is not too unwieldy in the woods. I think a Contender with 12" barrel is about like carrying a 7.5" Superblackhawk. If I was doing it now I might be looking at a 7JDJ and 12" barrel.

Short answer

357 MAX

And I have MAX and Herrett.

MAX is just simpler to reload for and since popularity is building, there may be sources of factory fodder.

Do a Google search on 357 Max and you will find a web page devoted to the care, feeding and performance of the round

The Herrett is easy to form but did cost more to start. The MAX brass can be hard to locate but seems to last and one can use carbide dies to resize. One has MANY options with the MAX, not so many with the Herrett. THEN one has to carefully look at which barrel one gets for the Herrett as there are two different rifling patterns just from the factory, different twist rates, etc.

After all that the .357 is "pre-expanded" over the .30... I have never found a suitable for me .357 Herrett barrel.

Oh, and one other thing, my 1:12" twist Herrett barrel will NOT stabilize bullets much over 150 grains. The 125-130 grain weight seems to be the way to go with it.

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Sincerely,

Hobie

358 Bellm, a 444 Marlin necked down in .358 Winchester dies. Less brass work, and good performance:

http://www.bellmtcs.com/BellmTriad/358BellmData.htm

I forgot all about it until I thought about forming and trimming brass.

I've been hunting with one since the early 80's. The reason for the Herretts was more efficient use of powder within a prescribed space. Sorta like the short, fat cases of todays short magnums. A 35Rem would work fine too in my opinion. However the 357Herrett was my very first handgun hunting unit...and it served me just dandy. I've taken a shiton of muley and whitetail deer with it, 3 cow elk and I lost count of how many antelope its dropped. It was the only gun I used for many years, so I was very good with it. I used Sierra 180 SP's mostly, but also cast the SSK .358 180 gr TC for it also. Powder was varied, but I4198 got used alot.

but it just don't have the reach of the Herrett. I'm fearful of stretching the frame on my TC's.....I do stay away from excess pressures.