This means the action and rifle will be shorter, more rigid, and can be cycled faster. and similarly sized cartridges only measure about 2.75 inches. 30-06 is length the cartridge measures about 3.334 inches. Though some will argue you gotta get used to recoil if you’re going to hunt big game, it’s an established fact, the harder a rifle kicks, the more difficult it is to shoot with consistent precision. Comparing similar bullet weights, the Creedmoor will shoot flatter and just as hard as the ought-six. They can now hang with the '06 and not whack you near as hard.Ĭonsider the 6.5 Creedmoor. Modern projectiles have even improved the performance of smaller cartridges. 30-06 ammunition is almost as rare as flying frogs. With bullets like the Partition, Triple Shock, AccuBond and ELD-X, those weighing less than 200 grains offer a better ballistic balance. 200 or 220-grain bullets didn’t because they impacted at slower velocities, thus penetrating deeper. 30-06 velocities the weakly constructed 180-grain or lighter bullets of that time, shed lots of weight during penetration. Back in Whelen’s and your grandpa’s day, this was not the case. True, but given our modern projectiles, 200 or 220 grain. 30-06 gives you about half what you pay-suffer-for. In other words, with what is arguably the best big game hunting ammo you can buy, the. The trade off-there’s always a trade off-is this performance increase comes with a 16 percent increase in recoil. 30-06 will deliver about 9 percent better performance than the 308. What Bell realized then, was the same thing Whelen suggested three decades prior, “…that the cartridge be such that the rifle using it shall have sufficient accuracy, flat enough trajectory and a moderate enough recoil so that the sportsman can place his bullets with sufficient degree of accuracy.”Ĭomparing Hornady’s Precision Hunter ammunition, the. “Karamojo” Bell, who killed more than a thousand elephants-about 800 with a 7x57 Mauser-said if he had it to do over his choice would be the.
But that, just like Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency, was from a time we’ll not see again. 30-06 Springfield was once the undisputed choice for big game hunting in 1927 the esteemed gun writer Townsend Whelen proclaimed it one of the best. The savvy among us trust ballistics, the rest follow their heart. Cartridge selection is driven by ballistics and emotion.