When I was about 20 I had a 39-06, shot it two times and recoil was so bad I got rid of it and used a 308 as my primary cartridge for about 50 yrs. Picked up more rifles along the way and two bad recoiler's for me were a 7nn mag and a 338 Win Mag. But shot them a lot and learned to handle the recoil. But once they were gone I never shot another magnum of any kind. Then in 1995 a very close friend died and left me his Paul Jaeger 30-06 which was his getting out of the service present to himself in 1945. Shot it some with light loads early on and worked them up toward max down the road. About 2016 I took it elk hunting and got myself a nice cow. Used it a couple more years and age got me to quit elk hunting. I'm 78 yrs old and packing out an elk at my age could pose a problem! But I ended up getting three elk with that old Jaeger rifle before I hung it up! Recoil from it doesn't bother me either, kind of liked shooting it. I think that first 30-06 was a Rem maybe a 722. Had a steel butt plate and have never shot anything that bad before. So never had any kind of love for the 30-06 but love some of the cartridges made on it's case!
Something about cartridges today is there are a lot of cartridge's that will do all a 30-06 will do and with less recoil! Oh yea. Few years ago I did a super cleaning on the barrel and tried cast bullet's in it. Using 180 gr cast I was getting a bit over 1300fps and about 1 1/2" groups at 100yds. Beauty though was the recoil. It's about like shooting a 22 RF with cast loads!
