Thread: .35 cal, why is it so rare here?

I was having a yarn with my cuz in Colorado today. He’s loving summer and getting out and about with the varmint rifles, and spending the evenings hiding from his teenage daughters and highly strung wife in his workshop. He and his step-bro have a seemingly infinite number of Savage rifles, mostly semi-custom jobs that they do themselves. They!re forever swapping barrels and stocks and doing stuff.

Anyway, he’s got a new barrel, a .358, 24”, semi bull profile. He’s umming & ahhhing about which .35 cal to chamber it in, does he go long or short? This got us talking about the Whelan, .358 Win and 35 Rem Mag.

I wondered why we very rarely see the .35 cal over here. I can recall seeing one Remington Model 7 in .35 Remington Magnum for sale on here, there’s @jakewire’s .35 Whelan project, I think @ZQLewis has a .358 Win and other than that... not a lot, eh? If I search for “Whelan” there’s a sum total of 13 mentions on this forum since the beginning of time. My one and only brush with the Whelan was awesome, loved it (QLD pigs and scrub bulls).

Why don’t we see the .358 here? Or is it a well kept secret? In Canada, this was quite a popular calibre. What was it that didn’t gel with NZ? Too much gun? No man eating predators? Are we woosies?