I hate knocking the 30-30 WIN. It has such a loyal following, I feel like I'm kicking Santa Claus or something. I know a lot of my problems with it were flukes. However, 30 WCF is just not my first choice for whitetails.
I own a Marlin 336. I happen to like the extra safety, but I only engage it when I'm unloading the magazine. The rest of the time, I either have a cold chamber or rely on the half-cock. Functionally, it was perfect for bringing my sons online. The Marlin 336 was easy for me to look down and see the condition of the rifle. It was easy to teach good form to the kids.
Performance? Look, I'm not going to kid you. After one year of hunting with the 30-30 myself, I went out and bought a Savage 99 in .308 WIN. I have never regretted it. After a couple of years on the 30-30, my sons all switched out to 30-06, and never had problems. Could we all have stuck with the Marlin? Yes. Did we have better luck with bigger 30's? Yes.
Around our ridge, you often hear someone emptying a 30-30 lever magazine at deer on the Opener. You can tell the shooter ain't bringing home any venison. Is it the rifle? No. You can just listen to the stories and you can see what's going on.
1) Everyone thinks they can take a hand-held shot at 100 yards without practice.
2) Everyone thinks a 300 yard shot is duck soup.
3) Everyone thinks they can sight in dead-on at 50 and be good out to. . . nobody knows how to really judge distance around here, so it really does not matter.
I'd be the first to say it is the Indian and not the bow that is at fault. On the other hand, when I'm up in a tree on the Opener, I have had much better luck and greater confidence at 80 yards with a slightly downloaded 308 WIN than I ever had with a hot 30-30. At the other end of the spectrum, when I'm trying to fill the freezer at the end of season, I can put a 30-06 on a doe out all the way to the back of the pasture without trying to judge range. It can be 75 yards or 220 yards, and I can put the crosshairs on the chest and be sure I'll have a dead deer.
