Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles '06--One bullet, one load?

165 or 180 grain Hornandy and 4350.

In my experience, the latest fad or craze is a bit misguided.

Today there are LOTS of long range target bullets made in various calibers, with the largest number of them being 30 calibers.
However they are TARGET bullets.

Unfortunately some of the target bullets are sold as hunting bullets, but they are extremely poor choices for that job. Burger making the worst ones of all. There are others too,but any bullet that shatters into fragments at ANY range is a poor hunting bullet. Some will hold together about 40% at long range, but shatter at 300 yards and closer. Bad choices.

Some like the Barnes X an the Hornady GMX will expand at close range perfectly and do super well, until the striking velocity goes below 1900FPS. Super accurate at long range, but poor killers as they can make a very narrow wound if they only turn into a round nose instead of a mushroom.

In my 30-06s the only bullets I know of that will expand well at 900-1000 yards and still hold up on a shoulder shot at 15 yards are the Nosler partitions. They are accurate enough to use at loooong range too. So I agree with elkhunternm and gundog57. A Partition bullet of 180 is probably the best "One load/all game/all range bullet you can get today. The only other one that may cover the ground as well would be the new Accubond, also from Nosler, or Inner-bond from Hornady but I can't say from personal experience yet. I CAN say the 180 gr Partition does it all.
I know about them from about 45 years of use from game kills at 25 yards out to about 700 yards.
I have yet to find anything as good, let alone better.

Agreed. But,I have 4 pounds of it on hand. RL17 in reserve.

....and that's why I don't mention Bergers or monos. It's why I DID start out about using ABLRs....just seems you can launch a slippery bullet slower, and give it a better expansion window.

150gr NP's in my 270 win. for any and all events. I have never been disappointed. And you can bet your bottom dollar when I was using my 06' that it had a 180r NP ready for anything I pointed it at.

I've run 125-180s, of various Nosler and Sierra types, for 30 years. The partitions, BTs, and SGKs have always worked....just intrigued to experiment with my 30s and the same new bullet advantages being given to the 6 and 6.5 stuff. There's plenty of tried and true hunting bullets in 30, but some of these new pills do all that AND hold velocity/energy past 500, and drop and drift less, if one is inclined to practice out there....even 180 NPs can't compete with BC