The .350 Legend was built to satisfy a rule about case shape. Several Midwestern states limited deer hunters in parts of their territory to shotguns, muzzleloaders and handguns, and later opened those areas to rifles firing straight-walled cartridges. Winchester names Michigan, Ohio, Iowa and Indiana as the states it had in mind. Before it, hunters there used the .45-70, the .444 Marlin or a pistol round in a carbine, and each of those kicked hard or ran out of reach early.
Winchester introduced the .350 Legend at the SHOT Show of January 2019, and SAAMI accepted it that same month. It is a straight-walled case 1.71 inches long with a rebated rim of .378 inches, the same case head as the .223 Remington, firing a .357in bullet at a maximum pressure of 55,000 psi. Loaded, it is about 2.25 inches long. Winchester recommends a 1:16 twist, and its own ballistic data uses 150 and 180 grain bullets.
The case head matters most. With a .223-sized bolt face, the cartridge fits existing bolt actions and AR-15s with a new barrel and magazine, so a maker could chamber it without tooling a new action, and most of the big ones did.
The shortest barrels in the series
The eight .350 Legend tag pages here hold 381 records from 39 makers, 375 once six listings that share a barcode are folded together. Of the 325 rifles that state a barrel length, 200 are 18 inches or shorter.
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Barrel
Rifles
16in to 16.5in
103
18in
97
20in
61
22in
59
24in
4
26in
1
None is shorter than 16 inches, where the federal short-barrel line sits, and only five are longer than 22. For comparison, the .270 Winchester has exactly one barrel under 20 inches in 526 records.
The reason is in the case. A straight-walled cartridge of this size burns its powder fast, much as a large pistol cartridge does, so most of the velocity is made in the first 16 to 18 inches of barrel and little is added after that. Winchester's own figures make the point: from a 16in barrel it quotes 1,649 foot-pounds for the .350 Legend against 1,002 for the .223, and from 20in barrels it quotes 1,800 against 1,619 for the .30-30. Makers build it short because a longer barrel adds weight without adding much speed.
Who builds it
Action
Guns
Bolt action
256
Semi-automatic, AR pattern
76
Single-shot rifle
27
Handgun
16
Savage alone accounts for 99 of the 375 guns, more than a quarter, almost all of them Axis and Axis II rifles with the same 18in barrel. That single rifle is why 18 inches is the most common barrel length on the chart above. CVA, Winchester's XPR, Ruger's American, Mossberg's Patriot, Howa, Weatherby's Vanguard and Tikka make up most of the rest of the bolt-action side.
Of the 375, 57 are called compact, youth, bantam or mini, 24 are left-handed, and 39 are sold as scoped packages. These are first deer rifles and budget deer rifles for hunters in states where the cartridge is the legal option, and the bolt-action tag is dominated by them. The Savage page and the Winchester page carry the two biggest families.
The AR-15 version
Because the case head matches the .223, an AR-15 in .350 Legend uses the standard bolt and bolt carrier. The barrel changes, and so does the magazine: Winchester says plainly that the cartridge needs a slightly different magazine because of its dimensions. The .300 Blackout works the same way, putting a heavier bullet through an otherwise standard rifle.
Of the 67 semi-automatics that state a length, 58 carry a 16in or 16.1in barrel, the shortest a rifle can legally be without registration. The makers are the AR specialists: Great Lakes Firearms, CMMG with the Resolute and the Dissent, LWRC, Diamondback, Radical and Ruger's AR-556 MPR. The semi-automatic tag collects them.
Single shots and revolvers
A straight-wall cartridge at modest pressure is also an easy fit for a break-open single shot, and 27 of the rifles are exactly that. CVA's Scout family is most of them, alongside the Traditions Outfitter G3, GForce Arms' GFTXP, Rossi's LWC, Chiappa's Big Badger and a Thompson/Center Encore. Most carry a 20in barrel. They are now on their own single-shot tag.
None of the four earlier cartridges in this series appears in a revolver in the catalog. The .350 Legend is chambered in three.
Handgun
Type
Barrel
Smith & Wesson Model 350
X-frame revolver, 7 shots
7.5in
Magnum Research BFR
Single-action revolver
7.5in, 10in
Taurus Raging Hunter
Double-action revolver
10.5in, 14in
CVA Scout pistol
Break-action single shot
11.5in, 14in
Savage 110 PCS
Bolt-action pistol
10.5in
Ruger AR-556, POF Constable, Franklin CA12
AR-pattern pistols
9.5in to 12in
Smith & Wesson announced the Model 350 as the first production revolver in the cartridge, built on the same X-frame as its .460 and .500 Magnums, with a ported 7.5in barrel and a seven-shot cylinder. All 16 handguns are on the .350 Legend handguns tag, which did not exist before this article.
Where it sits
Cartridge
Introduced
Bullet
Records
Makers
Barrels under 20in
.30-06 Springfield
1906
.308in
554
39
5
.270 Winchester
1925
.277in
559
30
1
.243 Winchester
1955
.243in
652
40
25
6.5 Creedmoor
2007
.264in
1,398
114
126
.350 Legend
2019
.357in
381
39
200
The .350 Legend has the fewest records of the five and by far the most short barrels. Its dimensions came from a hunting regulation, where the other four were designed around ballistic goals, and the rifles built for it are short, light deer guns. Winchester followed it with the larger .400 Legend, a separate cartridge with its own tag, so a search for "Legend" returns both.
What to look for
Check
Why
Barrel length
16 to 18 inches loses little; a longer barrel adds weight more than speed
Magazine
AR-15s need a .350 Legend magazine, not a standard 5.56 one
Twist
1:16 is the common rate and stabilises the usual 150 to 180 grain bullets
Local rules
Each straight-wall state writes its own case rules, so check the one you hunt in
.400 Legend
A different, larger cartridge with the same surname
The audit for this article corrected 121 .350 Legend records. Titles on 54 of them carried invented descriptors ("Precision Hunter", "Precision Elite", "Walnut Precision", "Black Elite", and a fabricated "1st Gen" and "3rd Gen" on Winchester XPRs, which have no generations), a GLFA rifle was titled AR-10 when it is an AR-15, and a dozen weight fields held either the pounds alone or the ounces left over from "6 lbs 12 oz" with the pounds dropped. A pair of Remington 783 bolt rifles were filed as semi-automatics. The tags also gained 67 guns that had been on none of them, and an upper receiver and four pistols came out of the rifle tags.
Nick Sawinyh - Nick Sawinyh is a father, husband, hobby farmer, and gun enthusiast from Kentucky. He founded GunsNation and writes most of what appears on this blog.
