Have you ever thought that maybe there is such a thing as too many guns? or too many barrels in some of our cases? Well if you did, you’re in the wrong place my friend. With so many terrible things going on in the world today, I like to embrace every new opportunity to shoot something. And since I have a good friend who is part mad-scientist part gunsmith, I get the opportunity almost as often as most see Bloomberg for president ads.
Watch the video at the end of this article
Once again Eric at ES Tactical has made me another barrel for my Desert Tech MDR, and this one is chambered in the new cartridge from Winchester, the 350 Legend.

I’m no ballistician, nor does Winchester give me any kind of compensation, so I’ll just use their words and description of the 350 Legend. The Legend was specifically built as a hunting cartridge, a straight-walled hunting cartridge with a specific reason. Some state agencies only allow straight-walled cartridges for hunting big game, I assume this is because of the dangers of shooting beyond your line of sight in a semi-populous area. Winchester markets the Legend as the fastest straight-walled cartridge available, there are several factory loads with muzzle velocities over 2400 feet per second. They claim this gives the 350 Legend more speed than a 450 Bushmaster, more penetration than a 243, all while carrying more energy than common rounds like the 30-30 or 223.

Now that I’ve given the Winchester speech, I’ll tell you about the MDR conversion kit from ES Tactical. The multi-caliber MDR (or MDRX is the new model) is easily changed from one caliber to the next, the 350 Legend is the latest option from ES Tactical. The Legend uses the 223 Remington bolt, and magwell, but it has a Legend specific magazine due to its straight-walled design. The barrel I received from ES Tactical is eighteen inches long, it was threaded 5/8-24 to fit my suppressor, and fluted to save weight and impress the ladies. The barrel drops into my MDR chassis like any other, and after a quick gas valve adjustment, it was running smoothly.
I fired a couple different loads from both Winchester and Federal. The Winchester white box was their 145 grain fmj, while it shot just fine, it failed to impress me as far as accuracy and function. It even popped one primer out of a case which made me suspicious. The Federal Premium 180 grain Power Shock performed much better, both for function as well as accuracy. The 350 Legend was everything a deer hunter would need inside the suggested 250 yards it is recommended for, I found hitting jug sized targets boringly easy from the standing position, even at the 250-yard line. This may in part be due to the MDR’s bullpup balance, and the quality of barrel and trigger.

For those who are still in the dark about the MDR(X), you really should do yourself a favor and check it out, it is multi-caliber, completely ambidextrous, and its bullpup configuration gives it an extremely compact chassis while carrying big options for both distance and accuracy. If your interested, you can read more about it here or there.
The 350 Legend does not like the 223 Remington ejection chute on the MDR, though they share the same case head, the lack of a bottleneck on the Legend causes a bind in the chute causing jams. The 308 sized chute won’t hold the case, so it’s no-go as well. That’s fine, just as with my 450 Bushmaster, I leave the chute off and let it throw the spent cases to the side. I did pay close attention to where they were landing though, as I intend on reloading them, and the MDR throws them pretty far.

Both the 450BM and the 350L would be great for those of you who are forced by government caveat to hunt with them, for me, I guess it would depend on whether I wanted to hunt supersonic or subsonic. Either way, I don’t think you could go wrong.

-CBM