30-06 Bullet weight?

hoytcanon said:
anything from 110 to 200 will be fine... No reason whatsoever to switch from the 150's unless you just want to try something different. You would be hard pressed to find a .30 cal rifle designed for hunting that won't shoot 150/165/180 bullets... No need to overthink it.
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bingo!
 
I have been loading 165 gr. Nosler partions over 57gr of IMR 4350 since the late 70's in the 30-06 with great success and accuracy. Since the Nosler accubonds have come out I have also loaded them. Have shot many moose with that load and never had to go looking for one. Has worked well for me anyways.
 
If you are hunting deer you might find a 165 grain a little less destructive in the meat department. To me a 165 grain bullet is the best weight for a .30 cal unless you are shooting heavy game. Seems to me in the ballistic charts for Remington the 150 starts out 100 or more fps faster than the 165 grain but at 300 yards the 165 is moving at a higher velocity than the 150.
 
It is not so much as matching a bullet weight to the barrel - it will shoot almost anything.

It is more about matching the bullet weight to the target.

If it was my rifle I would find what brand of 180 gr ammo shot well, and then use that single brand of 180 on deer and moose.
 
I agree with actually shooting and see what you get. The discussion on barrel twist is a bit misleading, since most calculations deal with bullet length, not weight. A shorter, heavier round nose might stabilize in a marginal twist where a longer, lighter, pointer bullet might not. A quick search on Internet shows 30 caliber rifles of many chamberings (308 Win, 30-06, 300 Win Mag, 308 Norma, on up to 300 Weatherby, etc.) have all been made with both 1-10" and 1-12", and, apparently, as per the OP, some in 1-11". So, back to OP's question - try some and find out how they behave in your rifle.
Yesterday, I set up some 250 Nosler Accubond loads for my 9.3x62. It's a 1951 Husqvarna Model 640 rifle. Turns out I was about .375" short of the lands at an C.O.A.L. that would still fit in the mag. Not good. Used brand new PPU brass that had not been fire formed. Not the best idea for peak accuracy. Had a M8-3x mounted. Again, not really ideal. Ran a pressure series up to 60.5 grains Varget. Shooting off sandbags, targets lasered @ 102 yards. 59.5 grains put three in a 3/4" triangle. Must have been luck. 60 grains had two of three holes cutting. 60.5 had all three in another 3/4" group. Going back out later today to verify, but sometimes you just have to shoot it, to see what it does, instead of reading why it shouldn't work.
 
I like 165 for an all around good bullet. I am currently using the Sierra Gamechangers with some good results.
The heavier bullet will typically give you better BC but only going to 300 either will work well.
 
Steamwhistle said:
I've been doing some reading about what bullet grain I should be shooting and I'd like to have a discussion the see what cgn thinks. I shoot a Tikka T3 in 30-06, it has a 1 in 11 twist, and I shoot 150gr federal blue box very well out of it. However I've been thinking, what is the barrel designed for? Most of what I can read on the forums is telling me I should be shooting closer to the 180gr range.

I've considered buying a box in the 165gr range to see how it will shoot. I'm interested to find out what the rifle was designed for and to see if I can get better groups with a different bullet weight using factory ammo. My shooting never reaches out past 300m, I'm just interested in the relation between barrel twist and length, and bullet weight.
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You may have to buy several boxes of ammo in order to find out what your rifle prefers. I would start with 165s and 180s std C&C loads.
 
Steamwhistle said:
Is this with a 1 in 11 barrel?

I'm curious if I will get a slight accuracy improvement if I switch to a different grain. For example if I started to reload my own ammo, would I find that in my barrel 180gr loads would outshine 165 and 150?
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An excellent set of questions. "Grain" is a unit of measure, like gram, ounce and pound. You are using "grain" as a synonym for "weight". It isn't. As a result, your question reads badly.

Use "weight". In North America we will respond with weight suggestions in "grains". A European member might quote grams.

And as I said earlier, 180gr is a "do everything" bullet for 30-06. A 150 gr is a bit explosive on deer and might not penetrate on some moose shots.
 
For factory loads I found Federal Sierra Game King with 165 grain bullets to be very accurate in my rifle. i also found that WINCHESTER Ballistic Silvertips with 168 grain were also accurate. Shot mostly moose with those bullets. Almost every 30-06 rifle will shoot a mid grain bullet decently without too much trouble. I've never found the need to use 180 grain bullets in a 30-06. I save the 180 grain bullets for the 300 WSM.
 
Ganderite said:
And as I said earlier, 180gr is a "do everything" bullet for 30-06. A 150 gr is a bit explosive on deer and might not penetrate on some moose shots.
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Question for you: would you say the same for 150 grain monometal bullets with respect to being explosive? Although I've used the 30-06 to kill a few deer I usually use other cartridges like a 6.5x55, 6.5-06, .270 or .280. The ones I've hit with the 30-06 have been with 150 grain Speer hot-cor or Federal Fusion. There was more damage than what I usually see with a 6.5x55 or a .270. But not way way more. I've never hit one with a .30-06 with 180 grain bullets. I can't imagine a Barnes ttsx giving explosive results (?). And the 150 grain projectile will shoot more flat.
 
My Tikka 30.06 seems to like handloads with 175gr Barnes LRX or 180gr Accubonds. Factory ammo it enjoys Hornady Precision Hunter w/ 178gr ELD-X. Doesn't shoot the Nosler 180gr Accubonds that bad either.

My most accurate load is the 175gr LRX 0.5MOA...but the Hornady boxed loads gets me another 80-100fps on it.
 
I'm shooting Barnes 168gn ttsx in my 30-06 for everything from coyote to moose. Never had an issue. The mono metal ammo retains weight so you can skip traditional ideas about bullet weight for this game or that. Bigger heavier animals need more weight to insure penetration when using conventional jacketed lead ammo.

Lead hunting bullets are designed to fragment on impact and in doing so they send out a cloud of particles into the animal. The core of the bullet is what pushes through and causes the wound channel. The Partition bullet for example has a copper wall to separate the bullet in 2. The front end would fragment and cause a huge shock to the animal and the rear section would stay together and punch through. Some bullets use different alloys for the jacket or core that would be harder or softer, the soft lead is fine for small or medium game like deer but inappropriate for larger beasts.

Copper bullets usually retain 90 - 95% of their initial weight so even the lighter lead bullets usually get very good penetration and slightly higher velocities over lead.


There's lots of videos on YouTube showing how different bullets fragment on impact.
 
Maybe I did not work hard enough, but in the 30-06 I never experienced any success accuracy wise with 110 grain bullets. And I gave up on them.

However moving up to 125 grain spire points produced much better results.
Okay accuracy with Nosler ballistic tips. But settled on the Nosler Accubond 125 for consistent sub inch groups at 100 yards. Many three shot groups were hovering right around half inch with my deer rifle. It's a strange thing to ponder, two bullets so close in visual appearance from the same company. However the Accubond, easily two steps ahead in accuracy department.
Info.
 
if tight groups is what your looking for and begin reloading, you may wanna look into barrel harmonics, custom tuning a load to your rifle and optimal charge weight. The type of bullet may have as much or more effect on the efficiency (expansion rate) on a particular animal as the bullet weight.
 
It sounds like you are not reloading so maybe looking for the most accurate factory ammo. This can take some time and money. Before reloading I did find HSM 180 Berger's were pretty accurate on my rifle
 
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