Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting 30-06 vs. 300 win mag

If you can shoot, a .30-06 it will do the job at 450. If you can't then it won't.

If you can shoot a .300 (or .338) then it might kill a little quicker. And it might not.

Just an observation but if one is getting a sore shoulder from only 5-10 shots then he's not shooting enough to be taking shots past 300...

That's the way I see it, what do you all think?

Dober

...If you have a 30/06 and think you need a 300 Winchester, why not just buy some Hornady light magnum loads for the 06? That bumps you so close to 300 power I doubt a game animal would ever know the difference.

i've never shot at anything out to 450 yards, but i have killed elk with both the 06', 300 win mag, and 300 wsm. out to around 300-350 i couldn't tell the difference, so i sold the mags and went back to the 06'. 300-350 is my max range, but i like 150 a lot better.

I remember Jeff Cooper once wrote: "When was your last (hunting) shot over 200 yards? Why?".

I believe my favorite writer, Finn Aagard, said the same or maybe even said it first. I tend to agree. While I admire great shooters who can go the long shots, I try to remember we are hunters, not wannabe snipers. Not trying to stir the pot too much, its just my .02 worth, but its how I roll. All that said, my last elk was right at 265 so I am willing to stretch a little. Les

My thoughts exactly, Knight! I (and most people) shoot mild-recoiling calibers best. I have killed 15 elk (I think) in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Mongolia and most of them were less than 100 yards away. The only bull farther than 300 yards was in Mongolia, and I didn't try to get closer because I was in a hurry to end the hunt.

Bill Quimby

Now just in case we have a few inexperienced people out there reading this forum information etc., I just want to say that in hunting elk is one thing but shooting them far away is a totally other subject, especially when your speaking of magnum caliber ok.

Like I stated before, I grew up reading the likes of Bill Jordan, Jack O'Conner etc. and while it might be the "macho" thing for a man to want to shoot a big magnum caliber, it takes a lot more time and practice to be as efficient with it as it does a 30-06 or even a caliber that is lesser in energy production and recoil.

The 300 Winchester magnum is a wonderful hunting tool for hunters who can tolerate it's recoil and master the skills to hit things with it down range. To be more exact, a 30-06 when shooting a 180 grain bullet will have the recoil of around 24 pounds of energy in recoil to your shoulder and the .300 Win mag will shoot that same weight bullet at around 30 to 32 pounds of energy. Now a jump up in just 5lbs of recoil energy, is very noticeable to most shooters. Another level or step up the ladder you might say and that could be the straw that broke the camels back in terms of down range accuracy.

This is something many hunters don't think about when purchasing a hunting rifle in a particular caliber, not until they have a certain level of experience with guns behind them. More recoil usually generates less accuracy the further down range one shoots.

One of the reasons that the Army phased out the 30-06, in favor of the 7.62 (.308) back in the 1950's, was "lesser recoil" in the form of 5lbs, which let green troops be more accurate down range when shooting. I can still remember those purple colored shoulders of many in my barracks during boot camp who met up with the steel buttplate of the 30-06 M1-Garand combat rifle.

The 300 Win mag shoots a 180 grain bullet faster by some 300 plus feet a second but there is also a price to pay in the form of recoil and one must learn to master that recoil to be able to master the extra range a magnum this magnum caliber can give you.

Oh, bye the way, I once saw a hunter kill an elk at over 440 yards with a 30-06, using a Nosler partition 180 grain bullet, so don't think you need magnum power only to take down large game at 400 yards. A hunter needs "marksmanship skills" first! Not everybody is meant to shoot a big magnum and lesser calibers like the 30-06 are capable of killing most big game down range.

I used to shoot elk at long range in my mispent cowboy youth, but over the years, I have seen so many wounded at long range and I have also shot low and broke legs at long range, fortunatly I recovered all but one but that one combined with what I had seen in the past changed my long range shooting practices. I quit doing it...

What I have seen is a good shot at the long ranges (450 and over) will seldom miss an elk or deer, but he will miss the kill zone and more often than most will admit, they always seem to have selective memory on that count...Mostly they will shoot low and break one or both legs or the wind will stick one in the guts...

Today I never shoot past 300 yards, I like to do my hunting before I do my shooting, and I can usually get a 100 or so yards closer to an elk at that range with a little planning..and I get a clean kill.

I also mostly hunt the black timber as in Idaho the good bulls hole up in the nasty thick places after day one, and don't come out until dark thrity. Here is where the .338 and 300 gr. Woodleighs shine.

Mostly today I use my 300 H&H, or .338 as it kills them better than my 30-06, but I am not condeming the 06, it is still my all time favorite caliber and I would not have any problem hunting elk with it..I have just used it so much its boring I suppose, but it always worked well enough.

The 300WM has a slight ballistic advantage over the 06 no doubt, but I dont kow too many guys whop have any business shooting 450 yards at anything. Now dont get me wrong, I know there are lots of guys that shoot 1k and 450 is a chip shot, but the vast majority of hunters are not able to make that shot.

If you are able and thnk you might be in a situation where a 450 yard shot the 300WM would get my nod, and Im a HUGE 30-06 fan, but at that range I want all the help I can get. This is assuming that the 300 wont kick me silly.

But I would take that shot with a 06 if that is what was in my hands at the time too.

My .30-06's get shot at 500 yards all the time but at that range I prefer my .300 WM when the target is big game.

Or my 7mm RM , which has about the same recoil as the .30-06.

Nothing I've ever used has come close to the noticeable hammer affect of
my 300 win mag shooting 200 NPs at 3,000 mv.

With dead on shoulder shots and varying distance 6 elk dropped in their tracks with that beast of a rifle. Most times I seen the life leave their eyes before they hit the ground.

300's are nast suckers, allright!

The magnums have an advantage with regards to velocity helping expansion and flatter trajectory. The problem is that this advantage is small in the real world and massive in one's head. I have gone back to the '06 myself to help control my "mental magnum".

I have killed my share of elk at 450++ with magnums so I wont tell others how far to shoot but sooner or later Murphy will school you. I decided to be more conservative with my elk shooting before this happens, now antelope is another story.

Everyone here is saying the same thing more or less and so will I. My first bull was a lasered 435 yards taken off a good field expediant rest with an '06 and a 165 partition. He took 3 steps and rolled down the hill from a boiler room shot. The reason I took the shot was because I had been working up the load and shooting that rifle 2-3 times a month for the previous 4-5 months at a range that had targets out to 400 yds. Would I take that shot today? Probably not since I haven't been shooting as much as I was then. As long as you're shooting a rifle that you can handle without bad habits, and you are shooting it regularly so you know how it performs, most rifles will do their job as long as the shooter does theirs. Just don't think that the super-duper whiz-bang mag will make up for the shooter not doing their job. The nut behind the trigger is more important than the hole above it.

The difference between the muzzle velocities of the "standard" 180-grain factory loads in the .300 Winchester Magnum and the .30-06 is 260 fps, which is about as much velocity as the .300 Winchester 180-grain load loses in the first 100 yards, given the BC of the average 180-grain bullet.

This is also about the difference when enthustiastic handloaders load each cartridge up pretty warmly.

In other words, the difference between the .30-06 and .300 Winchester Magnum is about 100 yards. Yet somehow many .300 WM fans are willing to shoot at elk 600+ yards away, but don't think the .30-06 is "adequate" (that wimpy word) past 250 or 300 whatever number they come up with.

This anomaly always puzzles me whenever this subject comes up, especially since I have shot some elk with both cartridges.

One guy who got into this discussion previous threads even went so far as to state that he had taken "almost 10 elk" with the .300 Winchester, and that it killed a LOT better than the .30-06. (What is "almost 10?" Nine? Eight? Even six would be closer to 10 than zero.) He said the elk he'd shot with the .30-06 traveled an average of 100 yards farther than those he shot with the .300 before keeling over.

This was very different than my own experience, since none of the elk I've shot with the .30-06 have even anything close to 100 yards. So I pressed him for details. It turned out that by the time he started using a .300 he'd also started going for spine/shoulder shots. Well, yeah, elk shot through the lungs will go farther than elk shot through the spine, no matter what the cartridge.

To some guys the difference between a .300 Winchester and a .30-06 will always be like the difference between a Volkswagen bug and a Ferrari, despite what Bob Hagel called "cold, hard ballistics."

I've had at least four experiences that come to mind that would answer that question satisfactorily, at least for me. The inference seems to be that to take a shot over 200 yds. is indicative of irresponsibility, poor hunting skills or both.

Exactly. Once I was standing next to a fella who emptied a magazine into a group of elk with his 300 win at about 50 yards. I looked at him in horror as these elk were so pressured they didn't know where to run so took off in a circle. Trigger Happy had reloaded and was banging away at some more elk that popped into the scrub opening when 2 elk in the first group went down. Lucky for him he had two cow tags for his hunt. The next year he showed up to camp with a 30-378 weatherby and repeated the same crap but worse. The next year he was booted by the land owners. I have seen men buy a magnum rifle because they missed last years elk with a 308 win???. It's the same jacked-up logic year after year and I don't see it getting any better loosing good hunters/writers and replacing them with magdumm pushers.

What would be a fun study would be to see what body types and what personality types bought and use which rounds...grin

I'm 4 thinking we could make some pretty good guesses.

Dober

I could help the "study" by asking customers if I could take a picture of them with their rifles. Might not be good for business though... smirk

Maybe offer a free sample of viagra with certain caliber/cartridge rifle builds.