In its day, the 30-30 was a smaller cartridge than most other of that era, but was an almost immediate success.
Most of the people who I have hunted with have used cartridges that exceeded the level necessary to kill the game hunted, but most of those people weren't the sort to practice and improve their shooting skills, so they were probably hoping that a larger more powerful cartridge would be a means by which to offset their lack of shooting/hunting skills. It usually didn't, but they shot up a few deer and punched a few tags.
