Another recent trend is fat cases with little body taper and a steep shoulder. Some of the new designs do shoot well but the old 06 case was built with a few things in mind that get overlooked or undervalued these days. I love the way am 06 case feeds and loads in most actions and like the mag capacity. I also seem to get less pressure/ bolt thrust extraction problems. The long neck is nice, it's efficient and works with most powders.
I love the 06 on a rem action because I've got room to seat them out and room to fit my fat fingers in the loading port. It's pretty impressive what a 30-06 with a 208 amax at 2700 mv will do at long range too.
I've been on a quest to get my custom go anywhere do anything rifle right for a while. It's a stainless 700 trued with a 23" 10 twist rem mag sporter custom barrel on it but unfortunately it doesn't shoot well. I like the way it feeds and handles so I bought a different brand barrel, rock creek this time, and plan to try again. I'm going with a little faster 9.33" twist and hope to give the 215 hybrids a try. I'm crossing my fingers that this one will shoot at least as well as my stock T3 and first gen Ti.
I think I have well over a dozen 30-06's mostly because of my JC higgens 50 and 51's, nato model 60's and colt 57 rifles. Whenever I see a commercial fn Mauser auctioned rifle I tend to pick it up and most are in 30-06. My friends say I'm stupid for having a big stack of them and that the commercial fn's will never be worth much but I think in 20-30 more years I'll be glad I grabbed them.
Lately all of my build interests are 700's or clones in the stainless synthetic garb but when I get old if I decide to build some Mauser type customs I'm going to have pleanty of actions to use. I've got lots of commercial fn's, some 1999 argentines, some 08 brazilians, some steyr built 1940 660's and a few others. I'm still holding out hope of finding a 33/40 one day too.
