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Guess I'll have to jump in here. Of the three cartridges specified, I have rifles in two of them. I have one in .280 Rem., an expensive custom job, and probably five rifles in .308 Win. I do not have a 7mm-08, but I do have rifles in 7x57 Mauser, which in a strong modern action can be loaded up to the same level as the 7mm-08.
Most of my hunting has been with the .308, as 7mm/.280 caliber rifles are a recent thing with me, but with the ones I have, I would not hesitate to hunt anything in the lower 48 with any of them.
I'm kind of a one bullet, one load type of person, so in the .308, I've settled on the 165 gr. Speer Hot-core for my do it all load in that caliber. I haven't quite decided just which weight bullet I want to use in the 7x57 and I'm just starting to experiment with the .280.
One reason I prefer the 7x57 over the 7mm-08 is the 7x57 can handle bullets up to 175 gr. without having the bullet intrude into the powder area of the cartridge case. My 7x57 has proven to be extremely accurate with just about every bullet I've tried in it.
I've only tried one bullet so far in the .280, the 175 gr. Hornady Interlock and so far the worst groups were 1.0"
The .308 is a horse of a different color. The rifle is a Ruger 77 RSI, the one with wood all the way to the muzzle. It's the fussiest rifle to load for that I've ever owned. It will shoot only two bullets with any degree of accuracy, the 180 gr. Sierra round nose and the 165 gr. Speer Hot-core. The Sierra is the more accurate of the two, but the Speer is better considering the possibility of fairly long shots. The intersting thing is the only 165 gr. load it likes only delivers 2550 FPS from it's 18.5" barrel. Still, it's been good enough to take deer out to 250 yards, laser measured. That same load from a 22" barreled rifle doesn't gain all that much speed at 2610 FPS, but again, it's more than adequate for how I hunt, and the bullet holds together very well. At least the only one I've recovered did. All the others were complete pass throughs.
So, based on my personal experience, I'd have to declare the .308 and .280 a tie really and then the 7mm-08. I know what the .308 can do, but the .280 has the potential to be at least equal or better than the .308.
Now, we come to availability of ammo. You can proabaly find .308 ammo about as easily as 30-06 at every little corner shop out in the sticks or even Wally World. My wally World always has .308 on their shelves, 7mm-08 a sometimes thing, and forget about the .280. Ask them if they have .280 Rem. and you're likely get a blank look and, "What's that?"
Paul B.
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