This past summer , my son , who is a budding rifle looney , traded for two RAR , one in 30-06 and one in 7mm-08 . I bought a new 243 carbine for the nephews and future grand kids . I shot them all with handloads developed for other rifles and was thoroughly impressed . They all shot groups plenty good enough to hunt with , with loads that were not tailored for them at all . I was so impressed with the 30-06 that I decided to play with it a little .I looked at what 30 cal bullets I had around and then loaded 150's with imr 4064 , 165's with H4350 and 180's with H4350 , loaded the different weights to identical charges of 52 grains for the 150's ,58 grains for the 165's and 57 grains for the 180's and used coal that was indicated in the manual and then shot for group and chronographed . The 150's all chronographed around 2900 , the 165's all around 2800 and the 180's all around 2750 . You could have hunted any of the loads depending on your preference and POI was close enough that no sight adjustment for 100 yards was necessary .That was with standard bullets from Hornady , Speer ,Nosler and Sierra.
