Going through my wife's grandpa's old ammo.  Got a bit of 375 Winchester, 60 rounds and about 70 cases.  

Chance I could get the rifle too, unfortunately in laws are not gun folks, so I don't know the rifle's brand, my guess is it is a Winchester, slight possibility it could be a Marlin.

I'm not a stranger to lever guns, my dad's HD gun is a 336, and I have pwned two Marlins, a 1894 in 44 Mag, and one in .32-20.  
I have my mom's dad's 94 in .30-30, one of my most cherished possessions. So it might be kind of cool to have a Winchester from each side of the family.

375 Winchester ammo is ungodly expensive, running around $60 a box where I can find it. So if I keep it I may have to start loading again.

Anyone have experience with this cartridge? I'm guessing the recoil is stout, a .30-30 isn't fun to shoot all day for sure, and this is a much heavier bullet.

Should I try to get the rifle? I shoot everything in my collection, so ammo is def gonna be an issue for this one.

Or should I just sell the brass and ammo, and buy more AR stuff?

If you are in to uncommon rounds then sure why not. I would want to be a reloader

Real Pain in the ass to get ammo.
Guy from my club was bitching and I thought he just sucked at computers.
I don't claim to be a searching genius but I generally do pretty good.

About all I could find was a odd neckbeard here and there selling broken boxes of questionable vintage for 2X or 3X list .

New brass is unicorn farts also.Used brass is all advertised as "once fired" (yeah , right) .

I guess it was one of those rounds that ammo companies only used to crank out every couple of years or so but in the last decade due to the panics they pretty much skipped over it to crank out more popular selections

Then again it isn't a caliber you would blow through 150 rounds every weekend. You would need to reload and would have to hit the auctions and get on some waiting lists to get a stockpile of brass . Even if you wanted to shoot it quite a bit if you could scrounge 60 or 80 cases and get on some waiting lists it would be tolerable .

Fair resale on the gun won't be huge because of the ammo problem but it is a desiriable caliber.

I have not shot it but as far as I know it is generally loaded to pretty modest presures and velocitys . Think 30-30 with more bullet weight . Not a super flat trajectory but a killing machine.
I would expect the recoil to be reasonable

I like my Big Bore 94 just fine it's one of the early 1978 production with a low 4 digit serial number.

The rubber recoil pad on the Big Bore 94 reduces the recoil to .30-30 levels.  The round itself adds 50 yards (in the 200 gr load) and 75 yards (in the 250 gr load) to the effective range of the .30-30, so it's still a short range proposition, but one that offers a bit more punch at the same ranges.  It was a great cartridge offering good bullet weights, superb sectional density and decent ballistics (for a lever gun) with a lot less recoil than a .444 Marlin - yet like the other medium bore rounds of the era, it never caught on.

The 250 gr Winchester loads offered 1900 fps in the BB 94 and 2005 ft pounds of energy at the muzzle.  At 200 yards it still had 1424 fps and 1126 ft pounds - very close to the velocity and energy of a .38-55 at the muzzle.  

The 200 gr load has a muzzle velocity 2200 fps  and 2150 ft pounds - basically offering .30-30 velocity with an extra 50 grains of bullet weight. At 200 yards it had 1526 fps and 1024 ft pounds.  That compares to 1605 fps and 857 ft pounds for a 150 gr .30-30 launched at the same velocity.  

The 250 gr load made much more sense, yet Winchester discontinued it in the mid 1990s, which also didn't help the .375 Winchester in general.



I save the .375 Win ammo for hunting situations where it makes a difference, and I save the brass for .375 Win loads.  Most of the time I shoot my Bog Bore 94 with cast bullets with what amounts to .38-55 loads.




If it's a Big Bore 94, there are a few things to know about it as in contrast to the time honored technique of putting a more powerful version of a cartridge in a slightly longer case (like the .38 and .357 Magnum), Winchester took a different approach with the .375 Winchester.  

First, they used a slightly shorter case, with a length of  2.020" compared to 2.085 for the modern .38-55 (which they shortened around the same time they introduced the .375 Win), and 2.125" for the original .38-55.

Second, Winchester also used a slightly smaller diameter bullet that actually measures .375" compared to .3775 for the modern iteration of the .38-55, and .379" to as large as .381" for the original .38-55.

Third, Winchester used a fairly long throat in the Bog Bore 94, at least in the early production examples.  

What that all meant was:

a) While not recommended, a shooter could mistakenly fire a .375 Win cartridge in a .38-55 and, due to the smaller diameter bullet and the longer resulting throat in the .38-55, not blow it up.

b) Again while not recommended due to adopting a shorter case in the modern .38-55 and chambering the .375 Win with a longer throat that would allow the .38-55 round to be chambered and release the slightly larger bullet, a .375 owner could mistakenly shoot a modern .38-55 round in his big bore 94 and not hurt anything either.

This was fairly important as Winchester was very slow and very sporadic in getting .375 Win ammo in the field to go with the new rifles it was selling, and the first couple years, the availability was pretty spotty, which didn't exactly help the .375 Win catch on with shooters.

There are some quirks that arise when you start shooting cast bullets in the .375 Winchester.  Winchester used a fast 1-12 twist (compared to 1-14 in the T/C Contender and Encore, 1-18 in .38-55 and 1-15 in many modern rebored .38-55s), so while is's prone to powder fouling with Black powder loads, it's actually well suited to smokeless powder loads using larger, longer bullets at .38-55 velocities.   But it's not all good news as the rather generous throat also means you need to use a comparatively large diameter cast lead bullet to get a good fit in the throat (to avoid leading) and then rely on the barrel to size as it's fired.  If you use .375 Diameter cast bullet, you'll get gas cutting before it has a chance to obturate in the bore and that will result in leading in the bore.

.375 Win brass is all but unobtainable now, but you can use .38-55 brass trimmed to length (what ever length readily chambers in your .375 Win is ideal, or you can just go with the 2.,020" default for .375 Win).  You can also fire form new .30-30 brass to fit the .375 WIn.  Back during the great shortage of pretty much everything, I could still get .30 -30 brass so I used 8 grains of Unique under a case full of cream of wheat.  I filled the case to the bottom of the neck and then held tin place with a pea sized wad of toilet paper.  Provided you fire it vertically, the case will firearm very evenly with minimum trimming needed to square up the mouth,  The resulting cartridge is just a bit shy of the 2.020 length but works just fine.

I did some fairly extensive volumetric comparisons with these .30-30 > .375 Win cases and found that on average the volume was slightly smaller in the .375 cases, however there was also substantial overlap with the most voluminous .375 cases being larger than the least voluminous .30-30 > .375 cartridges.  With that in mind, I suspect that full power .375 Win loads could be fired in them, but I stick with the 42,000psi limit of the ,30-30 cartridge, which is more than adequate for .38-55 cast loads.          

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The Big Bore 94 is well made and holds it's value well, and in very good to excellent condition a Big Bore 94 XTR will sell north of $800, even given the current lack of ammo for them.  And they are probably not going to lose any value, especially in the earlier pre-angle eject and pre-rebounding hammer configuration.

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If it were me, I'd try to get the rifle as well and thens tart loading for it if you want to shoot it, or just keep it as an investment, particularly, if you can get it for a good price.

Thanks for the input everyone, DakotaFAL especially.  I do like the process of making my own ammo, so that might be a fun project to work on. I have never cast my own bullets, I did reload for my .270 Win rifles a long time ago.
It is quite likely I will be relocating somewhere south or east in a couple years for work, so having a close in hunting rifle is probably a good idea.

I may get to see it weekend after next,  I am the only person in the family with a safe, I will likely end up storing all the old dude's guns while the family decides what to do with it all.

Kind of sad, if you count all the grandkids from my family and the wife's family, out of nearly 40, I'm the only one who shoots and hunts, and the only angler too.

Take you kids hunting and fishing...only takes one generation to die off.

I knew an old sheriff deputy that bought a Big Bore .375

He wasn't a hunter, but he liked it because it made a big hole and he figured it had plenty of power for anything he may have to shoot. He told me he loaned it to his son years ago, but he was gonna start dropping hints that he would like it back.

I kind of wish Marlin and hornady would do a modern spin on it with a 225 grain bullet. I'd think it would shoot flatter than a .444

Update

So I got the rifle for temporary safe keeping.

It is a Winchester 'Big Bore' 94, it has been modified with a William receiver sight and a fiber optic up front. The sight install is sort of 'gun plumber' style, I will have it corrected if get to keep it.  It does not have that hideous safety Winchester started defiling the Model 94 with, just  the
half cock notch like J M Browning intended. Condition was graded 70% by two reputable dealers, it has a lot of wear from riding in a saddle scabbard on a horse then a four-wheeler.  No corrosion to speak of, action is tight and smooth.  Retail, priced according to the blue book
and with an eye to the local market is $325-ish. I would post a photo but my post count is too low so it won't show up.

I was given the green light to test fire it Saturday, even through my PAST shoulder pad it was pretty stout. I shot eight through it for function. The sights were way off at 100 yds, but nothing I can't correct at the bench. I am not ready to pass judgement on accuracy until the sight problem
is corrected.  Working the lever from my  shoulder got me brass down the back of my shirt ... Not sure I'd want to shoot it any more than I have to check zero and hunt, I can practice shooting with the 30-30.

I will keep it if given the opportunity, hopefully the fam makes up their mind soon. If I end up in the south-east in a couple years, it will make a nice deer/hog gun.

You can practice with lighter .38-55 class loads as well.

I've owned a couple rifles in .375, and still have a Marlin 375 lever rifle.  My first .375 was a T/C Contender with 22" barrel and Rynite stock set.  I fitted it with a compact Leupold 2x scope,a nd the whole thing couldn't have weighed more than 5.5 lbs.  I loaded up a number of 225gr FP's at around 2100fps, and recoil really wasn't that bad.  You definitely knew it had gone off, but wasn't uncomfortable.  My Marlin is downright comfortable to shoot, and accurate as well.  I got lucky a few years back, and was able to snag several boxes of factory ammo and brass for cheap, so I should be covered.