Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Partition, 30-06, 165 vs 180 for all-around?

I started off shooting 180 grain Silvertips in factory loads at Texas whitetails and Colorado mulies in the very early 1960s. Someone in the group always had an elk tag in our Colorado camp and in those days, if you shot an elk, you had to go to town and buy another tag in case someone else got the same opportunity. (I never got the opportuntity.)

When I started reloading, I shot 150 Partitions (this was about 1967) and they were sudden death on both whitetails and mulies. Later, I switched to 168 grain Sierra Internationals which not only grouped better in my rifle, but also killed everything DRT. Then, as always happens, Sierra changed their bullet and they didn't work so well on game anymore.

When I could actually afford to draw an elk tag (I was a poor undergraduate and then graduate student for several eons), I began loading the 165 partitions. For about twenty years, every animal I shot from coyotes up to bull elk and nilgai antelope were taken with a .30-06 and 165 Partion handloads--this included a lot of animals taken on herd reduction and research permits--many, many more than most hunters shoot in a lifetime.

If I had to go back to using the '06 for everything, I would once again use a premium bullet weighing 165-168 grains. If elk were the only game, 180s or 200s would be the choice. By the same token, if I just hunted deer (whitetails, mulies, Coues), the 150s would be my choice. FWIW...

I've watched friends use the 165 Partition on a fair amount of stuff from elk down through black bear and deer,and for quite some time we could not recover any,as the penetrated very well and mostly exited the smaller stuff completely.A buddy used them on two elk and they exited those as well.I've used them from a 300 Win Mag started at 3200 on bucks in Saskatchewan,and they blew on through.For those who prefer pass-throughs on deer-size stuff, they work well.

I sat on the sideline and watched my brother shoot a big 5x5 bull elk at app 300 yards from a 30/06. We recovered the bullet from the offside shoulder area, under the hide, the base sorta squashed a bit.I would not hesitate to use the 165 on anything up through elk size.

I also will praise Big Red's post and logic, but would ultimately choose whatever bullet weight proved most accurate in my ".30/06" if that was my goto rifle.

The 165 Partition is indeed no slouche, and the .30 cal 180 Pt's have proven themselves in countless elk harvests.

It was only a couple years before Finn Aaggard's death that I discovered him as a writer to Wolfe's Rifle and Reloading magazines. I recall that once Aaggard wrote an article that he praised VERY LIBERALLY the prowess of the .30/06 with 180 grain boollits, with its ever-present .271 SD.

That article is when I started paying [profound] attention to sectional density, as I also recall that AAggard was [partially] commenting in that article that he'd recommended to one of his son's that that one particular load could take ANYTHING in North America - that wasn't too inclined to eat people ......

I too have also thought about what ONE bullet I'd use for that ultimate one-load scenario in the '06, and also the .308 Win.

The 165iver certainly makes most sense in the .308 - for the sake of this thread. However, for example, if I was going Mtn Goat or Sheep hunting in the outback of Alaska, NWT, Yukon, BC, etc. - a good accurate .30/06 165-load could handle everything, including GRIZZ protection.

But shoot what works best in your rifle!

That's the spirit!



Casey

30-06 and a Partition... all the rest is just "want" and not "need"! :-)

-jeff

Have never really HUNTED Elk but have done quite a bit of Kudu shooting in Africa. My standard for many years load for the 06 has been the 220gr Partition. It shoots particularly well in my gun and doesn't have any real drawbacks I can see. The advantage is great in Africa more so than here in the US but I wonder why heavier bullets are not used more here in the states. It has been my habit for many years to load the heaviest for caliber load. I have no real reason for it I just do it for big and small calibers alike.

I've not used the 30-06 in Africa, but I've used the 300 Win. Mag. extensively. I've never used anything heavier than 180 gr. bullets in the 300 WM, and I don't believe that anything heavier is necessary for any sort of plainsgame hunting. If I ever do use the '06 in Africa, I'll likely load 180 Partitions.

For elk hunting, I wouldn't have any qualms abouts loading well-constructed 165s in the 30-06, and it fact that's the bullet weight I started out with in the 30-06 some 35 years ago. I works extremely well for mule deer, blacktails, and elk. Even so, I consider the 180 gr. Nosler Partition to be THE ideal all-around bullet for the 30-06, and with it you can hunt anywhere in the world, and for everthing that you'd ever use a 30-06 to hunt.

Most 30-06s I've worked with would push 180s out of the barrel at somewhere between 2750 and 2800 fps., and I always zero 180 gr. '06 loads for 200 yds. dead-on.

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