Couple of points.. First of all, in my post, I said "full power loads" were not good to start a youngster with. Second point, if a beginning shoot is the size of a typical 11 or 12 year old, many 30/06 rifles are a little to heavy to be an ideal starting rifle.
Have seen way too many 12 year old first year hunters lugging around Dad's model 700 30/06 that weighs close to 9 pounds with scope, sling, and a full magazine of full power factory loads.
Yeah Royce, I have seen the same and have the same comical picture in my head as I type this, where the gun seems to dwarf the kid. I knew several cohorts when I was 12 who lugged dad's 30-06 their first years out in the field, including at least one Garand. I agree it's not ideal. Those kids got their deer though. We aren't talking about ideal here; we're talking about whether the 30-06 will work.
I grew up with a hand-loading father, so the concept of non-tailored ammo is somewhat foreign to me. Even my dad's "full power loads" were often far from it, because he worked up loads for what was most accurate, starting low and stopping when he saw what he wanted. He did not own a chronograph. I have gone far beyond the explorations he did, and have learned that it is a simple thing for the relatively experienced handloader to micromanage how a load will perform in terms of component consumption, velocity, trajectory, etc. Bringing this all back to the 30-06: this vanilla cartridge has over 100 years of load data out there doing just this sort of purpose tailoring, from gallery practice loads to tusker slaying. My point is that the proven flexibility of the round speaks to it's formidable utility.
Back to a kid's first gun for deer/antelope, I lean more and more toward an inexpensive light, compact, fast-twist 223 that a youngster or recoil-/report-shy greenhorn can quickly and easily learn to master for shots as far away as the shooter is comfortable with, namely 100-200 yards. The Ruger Easy-Bake Oven.
