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I have owned a 378 for about 18 years.This rifle has taken
a Northern Territory buff and a Cape buff in the Zambezi valley in my hands and a friend borrowed it to take his
buff on the same trip to Zim in 1991.In 2001 I took a
Win Mod 70 CRF in 416 Rem back to Zim.-it let me down BADLY-I wish I had taken my old friendly 378.
The big Weatherby's cop a lot of flack,I suspect from people who have not used them.I have a number of gripes with my 378 which I will expand upon but in its defence
I would like to make the following points:
The rifle has never failed to feed!!!
it will feed EMPTY cases 99 times out of
100-try that with a mauser!

The rifle is beautifully finished-try saying that about a Winchester.

The 378 is a very powerful cartridge-if the
projectiles are up to the task there is not an animal that
walks that would not be adequately penetrated to the target organ-try saying that about a 458 Win

The action is a very strong one-while shooting some 15 year old well travelled factory ammo
during a summer hunt (temp 110 F in the shade) over a
chrony the velocity exceeded +++ factory listings.The case
head melted into the ejector button and the rifle would not eject the empty round without flicking the case with a stick-try operating at whatever pressure that was with an
09 mauser!
That said I do have some criticisms:
The bedding is sound in design but,like all factory rifles should be attended too ASAP upon purchase.
The two recoil lugs never both bear evenly and I suspect the stories I have heard about the mags. bursting open
and spilling the rounds onto the ground were because neither recoil lug was properly bedded and the mag. well was acting as a recoil lug.

The rifle is MUCH too LIGHT.A heavy barrel and
weighted stock so with scope it should come in at 11 to 12
pounds would allow a rifleman to make accurate use of the cartridges potential trajectory-the rifles recoil in factory trim is much too much for my six foot 3 inch 230 lb
frame to shoot really accurately

The ejection port is small in relation to the cartridge size-it is near impossible in the heat of the moment to recharge the mag. from above.I discovered this as I approached my first buff,now wounded,over open ground.
This was an unguided (no PH back-up) hunt in the NT of Aus.
The rifle was then used as a single shot till the buff went down.The first shot was a good one but the factory 300gr softs back in then were not up to the task.
On the same hunt while bouncing around the back
of a cattle truck I tried to change rounds from the 270 gr
softs to the 300's-as soon as the mag. floorplate was opened the follower parted copany with the follower spring and the whole lot fell into the straw and cowshit on bottom of the truck-my buff was is sight at this point!!!

As mentioned early,if the rifle is subjected to a gross overload in hot weather the ejector can jam up-a flaw
in a DGR
In summary-I still have my 378 occupying a place of pride in the gun cabinet,the 416 Win piece of crap has been
traded off for a CZ550 in 416 Rigby(yet to see if its any good) but the next time I am in Africa it will be with a 500 double I have just ordered from Butch Searcy.Before it turns up I hope to give the 550 a run up in the Northern Territory after buff.
I would love to hear of the experiences of other 378 owners.
Cheers
Wombat_

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