I recently sent a PM to H&Hhunter to ask about cutting down the barrel of my .375 H&H Mag. I'm having the entire rifle and scope dipped soon so this would be the time to do it. He has a .375 H&H with a 20" barrel and mentioned that if he were doing it again he'd go no less than 22". With this in mind, I asked a friend who has a custom X-Bolt with a 19.5" barrel to stop by so that we could compare velocity using a CED M2 chronograph. We were able to compare a factory Remington load, his handload and my handload. Here are the results. I did all of the shooting so as to have consistent rifle recoil and all shooting was prone which should result in the highest velocity. Obviously a larger test would be better since the barrels probably have other differences in addition to the length. After seeing the results below I've decided not to cut the barrel down. I consider my Talkeetna to be a 500 yard hunting rifle for mule deer, elk and whitetail so I feel that the extra 100+ fps is worth the added length.