I would also not want to hijack this thread with tails of my mishaps, except that it bears on the story of the .308 ME in one crucial aspect. While a lot of folks love the 30-30 WIN for what it can do, a lot of other folks are less than impressed. When I started hunting Kentucky in the late 80's, the woods on the Opener were filled with sounds of guys unloading the magazines of their 30-30's at fleeing deer. You can joke all you want, but the simple truth is that as the old guard has passed on and the new generation has taken to the woods, the overall number of shots has diminished greatly. The old geezers were mostly tied to their 30-30's and clung to them, because they afforded fast reloading. The new blood are using bolt guns with rounds that have more power than the 30 WCFs. The number of shot strings I hear on the Opener has gone down by a factor of 3 over the past decade, but the number of telechecked deer keeps rising. The new crowd doesn't need to reload. They're getting it done with one shot. Having been around these guys now for over 30 years, I can tell you Grandpa and Dad were not intrinsically bad shots. Something else was going wrong.
Same thing happened over the years around here and it has nothing to do with the rifles or cartridges hunters are using today. The difference is that grandpa and dad hunted on their feet a whole lot more than junior, who tends to perch his butt in a tree/stand/blind all day. Hence junior tends to shoot almost exclusively at motionless, unalarmed deer. Gramps and dad on the other hand, did alot more still hunting and deer drives and hence alot more of their shots were at alarmed and running deer. Personally, as of this past season I've killed 80 deer with the .30-30 Winchester. I can't remember ever having to shoot one of them a second time. The vast majority were down in less than 50 yards and I don't recall a single one that went more than 80. Recovered bullets have been rare and I've tended to have good blood trails on the rare occasions a deer went far enough after being shot to need any trailing. Last seasons buck was down and dead 20 yards from where he stood when I put a 170 grain Federal power shok tight behind his shoulder. I have lots of other rifles to choose from, including scoped bolt actions chambered in .308 and .30-06 but 90% of the time it will be one of my .30-30 levers that I walk out the door with during deer season.
