The under-estimated 30-06... :)

[hunter24605]

All the -06 talk lately reminds me of my dad. He only had one "big gun" and it was a 30-06 he exclusively used for deer the last 30 years he was able to hunt..I remember in my 20's and picking on him saying that the 300 WM was soooo much better than his '06. (not taking into account that this was a deer rifle in the thick woods of WV where long range wasn't a variable) his reply was "Would you rather be ran over by a dump truck or a freight train? Either way you're a grease spot"

When I was a boy all of my immediate family would get together to sight in/check zero on their rifles before hunting season.

An old army buddy of my Uncle’s used a .338 Win Mag which sounded to me like the sonic boom of a jet. Everyone else in our family hunting parties used standard calibers. My other Uncles and Grandfather all shot .30-06s for everything, Dad was a .308 man because he could get it in a Savage 99. The .270 and .284 were also popular. These days things have changed, more magnums, less standards.

I feel most of the guff these days about the .30-06 in general comes from the younger hunters who have either never used one or read in a magazine some sort of comparison that belittled its performance. Many of these comparators appear to want to see the old warhorse dethroned and mince no words in attempting to do so.

I’ve had 6.5 Creedmoor shooters tell me in one breath that a .30-06 is at best a 200 yard elk cartridge and in the next breath tell me they’ve shot elk with their 6.5 out to 600 yards. Ha! I guess hunting for them is more like basketball, where only the numbers on their scoreboard are what counts. (Shot distance, bc of bullet, Boone and Crockett score, etc. not that the .30-06 is lacking in those departments necessarily.)

Without hesitation, the .30-06 to me is arguably the greatest general purpose hunting cartridge ever devised. And 114 years later it’s only gotten better. Short of Jurassic Jailbreaks, Moby Dick, or a Rhino and Elephant stampede, there isn’t much out there that it can’t be loaded up to do well. I have lots of guns but when I need to put meat in the freezer, 9 times out of ten I’m reaching for Old Reliable.

Let the whole rest of the world shoot 6.5s if they want to. I will gladly take a .30-06 any day of the week. If it was good enough for Grampa, it’s good enough for me.


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Ok, Boomer...isn’t it time for your nap?
LOL, Just being preemptive in case a millennial shows up to the thread....[emoji23]

 

[HAWKEYESATX]

Here's an article I thought several of you would enjoy.


https://www.ssusa.org/articles/2020/4/2 ... e-utility/



Hawk

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