A Straight-wall Hunting Powerhouse
If you’ve spent any time hunting in restricted states like Ohio, Indiana, or Michigan, you’re probably at least remotely familiar with the .350 Legend cartridge.
Engineered to meet straight-wall cartridge laws in states where bottlenecked rifle ammunition is prohibited on public hunting lands (and even on private land, in some states), the .350 Legend offers a practical solution without sacrificing too much in terms of performance.
It’s not been around for long, but in taking the market by storm a few years ago, it quickly earned a reputation as a bit of a hunting powerhouse.
The .350 Legend manages to fill a very specific need while still appealing to a broader group of shooters. It delivers enough energy to ethically drop medium-sized game targets, such as whitetail deer, but with noticeably less recoil than larger traditional rifle calibers.
Better yet, .350 Legend ammo is relatively affordable at most gun shops, and it works well in both bolt-action and AR-style platforms.
But while it offers super-flat trajectories and effective mid-range hunting performance, it remains a bit of an underappreciated outsider. Mainstream and well-known, sure. But an outsider, nonetheless. Let’s discuss.
A Quick History
Developed by Winchester, the .350 Legend made its debut at the 2019 SHOT Show, in Las Vegas, Nevada. While new cartridges are introduced to the market all the time, this one was a bit of a big deal for those restricted-state hunters, fitting a very specific need for a very specific audience.
Certain state legislatures have long restricted hunters to slug shotguns or straight-walled cartridges. For safety reasons, they say, because straight-wall cartridges typically have a shorter effective range and lower risk of over-penetration compared to high-velocity bottleneck rifle cartridges.
However, until the .350 Legend hit the market, most straight-walled options were older rounds, such as the .45-70 Government or .444 Marlin, which, while effective, typically came with significant recoil and bulky rifles.
Winchester capitalized on the opportunity and developed the .350 Legend from the ground up to bridge the gap between old-school big-bore cartridges and modern, low-recoil, mid-range hunting rounds. And it’s been a saving grace for many restricted-state hunters.
Hence its “big deal” status upon its release.
Ballistic Performance
The cartridge uses a .357-inch diameter bullet (sadly, it’s not interchangeable with .357 revolvers). Factory loads typically range from 145 to 265 grains, with 150-180 grain soft points and polymer tips being the sweet spot for most deer hunters.
Within that assortment, soft-point and polymer-tipped bullets dominate the market, offering reliable terminal performance and clean, effective kills on those mount-ready trophy bucks.
The effective range of the .350 Legend typically tops out around 200 yards. While that pales in comparison to some bottlenecked centerfire cartridges, like the .308 Winchester, the .350 Legend easily exceeds the minimum energy requirements for deer hunting in states with straight-wall restrictions.
Ballistically, the .350 Legend offers respectable numbers for a straight-wall cartridge. A typical 150-grain load, for example, will offer a muzzle velocity of approximately 2,200 to 2,600 feet per second (fps), delivering about 1,800 foot-pounds (ft-lbs) of energy, dropping to around 900 ft-lbs at 200 yards.
Heavier 180-grain loads typically clock in around 2,100 fps with muzzle energy in the neighborhood of 1,750 ft-lbs.
For reference, that’s more energy at 200 yards than the .30-30 Winchester, and certainly more energy than the .223 Remington, though the .223 has a flatter trajectory and longer effective range.
Not too shabby, if I say so myself.
What’s It Good For?
While it lacks the high-velocity punch of bigger bottleneck cartridges, the .350 Legend is more than capable of handling feral hogs, black bears, and other medium game at reasonable distances.
It’s also an incredibly versatile round. It’s available in a growing number of rifle platforms, including both traditional bolt guns and AR-pattern rifles and carbines, making it a reliable option for everything from thick brush hunts to property management and hog control.
That said, the .350 Legend is, at its core, a hunting cartridge. I suppose you can use it in home defense applications in a pinch, and many people do, but that’s not really what it’s designed for.
It was built specifically to give deer hunters in straight-wall-only states a legal and effective alternative to slug guns and lower-powered centerfire options. And in that realm, it certainly does it’s job. But outside of medium game hunting applications, it has few real-world uses.
That’s my opinion, at least.
Final Thoughts
The .350 Legend is one of those cartridges that makes a lot of sense once you understand the legal landscape and practical needs of restricted-state hunters. It’s not a do-everything round, but it was never meant to be. It’s a modern, efficient solution to a very real problem, offering reliable, ethical big-game performance in states where classic bottleneck rifle rounds are banned for one reason or another.
Whether you’re gearing up for whitetail season in Ohio, chasing pigs in Texas, or just looking for a low-recoil hunting rifle, the .350 Legend is certainly worth a closer look. It might not break any records, but it’ll certainly drop that 8-point trophy buck and do its part to keep your freezer stocked all year long. Not bad for a cartridge that wasn’t even on the radar a decade ago, am I right?
If you’re running a .350 Legend, don’t be the one scrambling for ammo last minute. Log in to your AmmoSquared account and load up now, because straight-wall cartridges have a habit of disappearing right when you need them most.
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