30-06 family

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buckchaser

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As I have "tagged out", my actual hunting has now been replaced by scouting and talking about hunting ...

As I related in a previous post, my hunting partner and I had a spirited discussion several weeks ago about creating a "quiver" from the 308 cartridge family. Our spirited debate was consistent with the diversity of opinions here as well on the topic.

Well, this weekend our topic of conversation was the 30-06 family and as you can imagine discussion was just as animated.

Our criteria was to select three cartridges from the 30-06 family to fill the following niches:

1) Open Country Deer (some varmint, but less important)
2) General Purpose Deer (with some elk/moose capability)
3) Big Game (moose, elk in bear country)

I went with 270, 280, and 35 Whelan respectively. Let's hear what those gathered around the "fireplace" here have to say!
 
1) .30-06 with 150 gr. bullets
2) .30-06 with 180 gr. bullets
3) .30-06 with 220 gr. bullets

If you can't do it with a .30-06, you probably can't do it with anything else either.
 
It's been said: the .30-06 with proper handloads will do it all. Therefore, feel free to build a battery of whatever different rifles you want because that is fun and that is why we are called "Gunnutz". Just don't kid yourself that you need the other rifles to do the different things you mentioned.
 
Tumbleweed said:
1) .30-06 with 150 gr. bullets
2) .30-06 with 180 gr. bullets
3) .30-06 with 220 gr. bullets

If you can't do it with a .30-06, you probably can't do it with anything else either.
Click to expand...

^This

You don't get much more out of a .35 Whelen than a 30-06 with 220gr. bullets, other than a few hundred more ft/lbs of muzzle energy. If you already had a 30-06 and wanted something different for grizzlies, then by all means, get a .35 Whelen, but with proper bullet selection a 30-06, it is more than suitable for even the biggest North American game. Likewise, a .270Win or .280Rem don't do significantly better than the .30-06 at range. If you want to improve performance, a regular .30-06 can be improved with handloading or use of high performance ammo like Hornady Superformance. Sure, some of those cartridges do certain things slightly better than the .30-06, but not well enough to justify 3 different rifles when you can do the same thing with just one. My opinion is, just get one really good rifle/scope combo.

p-17 said:
It's been said: the .30-06 with proper handloads will do it all. Therefore, feel free to build a battery of whatever different rifles you want because that is fun and that is why we are called "Gunnutz". Just don't kid yourself that you need the other rifles to do the different things you mentioned.
Click to expand...

Exactly!
 
The only downside to a .30-06 is that it's so dependable and reliable that it gets boring after a while.

That's why God gave us the .375 H&H.....or was that Holland and Holland?.....oh well, whoever, there's very little difference.
 
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