THE STRAIGHT TRUTH ABOUT STRAIGHT-WALLED HUNTING CARTRIDGES
Today’s hunter has a plethora of cartridges to choose from. Certain states and regions have limitations on what caliber and type of gun can be used. As a result, there’s innovation in lots of areas that would otherwise have been left behind by the march of technology.
Straight-walled cases offer a tremendous amount of utility in a surprising number of firearm types. They were among the first successful self-contained munitions developed. It was the advent of the self-contained metallic case that allowed for the first repeating arms to be manufactured and distributed on an industrial scale. Many of these cartridges are still in widespread use today—despite being more than 100 years old.
WHY STRAIGHT-WALLED CASES?
In recent years, a number of regions began allowing the use of straight-walled cases, mainly as an alternative to the use of shotguns. Shotguns have tremendous recoil and are not especially accurate, even with top-shelf slugs designed for rifled barrels. Recoil-sensitive hunters were essentially deterred from hunting as a result.
Because rifled shotguns are basically rifles, the idea came about that straight-walled cases would be an ideal substitute; most are, when compared to bottlenecked cases, low-pressure and have limited range. Many of today’s straight-walled cases have the same general effective range as that of a rifled shotgun—around 150 to 200 yards at a maximum (but more on that in a moment).
The legal requirements surrounding straight-walled cases often dictate what type of rifle can be used. Some areas (such as Michigan) have physical restraints on the size of the case itself. A cartridge case—and note that the bullet is not included here—must be between 1.16 and 1.8 inches and .35-caliber or larger. This means that
