Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Ask John Barsness Questions About "GETTING THE MOST OUT OF YOUR .30-06"

OU: Fabulous!Great accomplishment! Congrats on that.No wonder you like the 30/06....

Thanks Bob......but to complete all 29 with the '06 won't happen...maybe a mountain grizzly but not a Kodiak Bear...even with the BBCs! Those fellas are 375 H&H animals...And, Polar bears are now shut down for USA hunters importing...glad I got 2 of them when I had the chance...1995 and 1999...

Would like to see you start a thread on those many adventures. It would make a good teaser if you plan on releasing a book.

Best:)

I posted a lot of pictures and comments on Alaska..Rifles for Dall Sheep section

After reading JBs article some time back I wanted to try 180s in my rifle. I took my Model 700 .30-06 to the range today to try out some 180 grain Core-Lokts. This is a 5 shoot 100 yard group. The bottom hole is the last 3 rounds I fired. My friend gave me a tail bag for those 3. I didn't even have to adjust the scope. I had been using 165 grain Core-Lokts.

Mr. JB: I've been reading this thread for some time to get all of it. Earlier you made a statement that TURNED A LIGHT ON that I had never considered. You said, " I quit trying to make the 30-06 into a 300 mag."

I have handloaded the 06 for many years and trying to be the consummate handloader I wanted to be, I always tried to WRING every fps with accuracy I could get out of it. I have had MAGNUMS off and on for nearly as many yrs as 06's and it JUST NEVER OCCURRED to me let the 06 BE an 06 and the MAGNUMS be magnums.

This has given me a brand new perspective and a sense of RELIEF. Just "let it be, let it be." as the Beatles sung. Especially since I have 4 mags I don't NEED the 06 to be on steroids. I can ENJOY loading and hunting the 06 next year like never before. THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

I load my M-70 fwt in .30-06 with 180 grain bullets and RL-22 to 2800 FPS.....not a hot load at all.....pressures like a .270 Winchester.

This gives me a fine rifle for about anything one likes to hunt. It's light, powerful and runs a 2-0-8-2-4 trajectory and that's something I like.

It'll go with me on my next plains game trip and the .300 magnums will stay home. I far prefer the lighter rifle!

JWALL,

Good post!

After many years of swearing that I would never own a .30-06, I finally bought one back in 2002 to take on a plains game safari in South Africa back in 2002. After reading about its use in Africa by such folks as Theodore Roosevelt, Stewart Edward White, Osa Johnson, Ernest Hemingway, and Robert Ruark I wanted to use one in South Africa. When I started working with the .30-06 cartridge (handloading for it), I fell in love with it!

The .30-06 isn't the most powerful, nor the least. It isn't the flattest shooting cartridge out there but it does have a very decent trajectory. Frankly, IMHO, the .30-06 is what it is and that's not a bad place to be, ballistically, at all! It does very well what it has always done.... It provides an excellent balance of power, trajectory, bullet weight, velocity, and amount of recoil.

My two most favorite cartridges are now the .30-06 and the 9.3x62 (although I own a variety of rifles chambered for other cartridges).



Limpopo Bushbuck
Rifle: Ruger M77 Mk II in .30-06 Springfield
Handload: 220 gr Woodleigh round nose at 2460 fps
Location: On the banks of the Limpopo River in the northern part of the Limpopo Province in South Africa back in 2002.

Cheers!
-Bob F.

Bob- Great picture!!!

The earlier posts regarding the use of H4831 SC and 220 gr bullets in an 06 were interesting and reminded me of another issue with the same powder in a .338 Win. Mag. I know this is a 30-06 site but...

In 1965 my dad bought a .338 Win. Mag for moose hunting. He wrote Elmer Keith and asked him for his recomended load for the purpose. A week or so later Mr. Keith wrote back and recommended the use of the 275 Gr. Speer semi spitzer on top of a charge of 74 grains of 4831. I can remember loading that with my dad and hearing the crunching sound as that pencil long bullet compressed the powder. I have also checked numerous reloading manuals since then and there is nothing close to that charge for the lighter 250 grain bullets. The post on the 220 gr. 06 and 4831 got me to wondering if there ws a similar situation with other combinations and the .338 / 275 Speer in particular.

I do remember that shooting that load was an uplifting experience, virtually uplifting off the shooting bench! No extraction problems but can give no other info on what we as reloaders would look at to gauge pressures now 45 years later.

Here are some loads I developed with this bullet in the .338:

275gn Speer 63gn Varget 3.278" 2572
64gn Varget 2590
66gn 760 2504
67gn 760 2574
68gn H 4350 2538
69gn H 4350 2585
70gn WMR 2479
72gn WMR 2594

The next loads are what I developed in my own .30/06 with the 220gn bullet:

220gn Woodleigh 57gn H 4350 2551fps 3180FPE .508"

220gn Sierra RN 56gn Win 760 2560
57gn Win 760 2605 1.2 MOA
57gn H 4350 2524 .556"
59gn H 4350 2603 Warm
51gn IMR 4350 2393
52gn IMR 4350 2403
52gn Rel 19 2170 .7" Mild


John

I'm currently awaiting the mating of one of my old '03 actions to a heavy 28" Broughton barrel, and a Richards laminated Marksman style stock - trying to more or less recreate a somewhat updated version of a 1920's to 30's target rifle to shoot some long range matches with. '06 chamber of course.

Can't test a rifle 'till it's built, but while anxiously awaiting the fruition of it all, has anyone tried some of these faster loads in a longish (like my 28" one) barrel? Do the slower powders like the 4831's, etc. get proportionately more velocity increase after 24-26" or do they just add more wt. out front?

I'll be testing about a 4 gr. wt. spread in most of the slow burners to find both speed and accuracy in the gun. Any recommendations would be appreciated, but I expect the loads already mentioned here should prove out similar to what our game loads provide. Match bullets may allow a smidge more powder when they have shorter bearing surfaces, but that's about it, at least as far as my expectations run.

My 'smith is an excellent one, specializing in beanfield/tactical rifles, and a buddy has an amazingly accurate .308 on a Surgeon action. Us old pharts get the "yips" sometimes on the trigger just like we do with a putter on the golf course, but I believe that .308 will do 2.5" consistently at 600. I'm trying to teach him to shoot off the bench, and he's learning pretty well. I only shoot it occasionally, but .... what a rifle!

Any help with target loads would help allay my anxiety in the waiting process. THANKS!

I will be interested to see your results as my only experiment was to try some 180gn TSX handloads that were generated in a 22" barrel on a mod 70 Featherweight and then pop them off in a Ruger No 1 with the longer 26" tube.

Teh Winny clocked 2850fps and the Ruger broke 3100fps. It will be intereting to see what your longer barrel can achieve.

JW

I've ignored this thread as a "ho hum" topic. Boy was I wrong!
I have a lot of reading to catch up on!
Now we need a similar thread for the .270WCF.

Maybe JB will write a similar article on the .270. There's a number of new powders that might work well in the .270.

where can I find the article?

http://www.24hourcampfire.com/newsletters/May_2009.html

-Bob F.

JB An earlier poster touched on a subject that has my curiosity up. As a bar shooter[270] i have certainly noticed the brass heat difference. I have wondered if extraction occurs while the brass is still swelled against the chamber walls the friction could create a great deal of the heat?

Fred
P.S.
hope this doesn't bring oldwoman42 back

I think one could write a volume of books on the 30-06 and be hard pressed to include everything.

azrancher,

The burning of the powder creates heat, which heats up the case. In a standard-action rifle, the case is in the chamber long enough for much of the heat to be transferred to the steel of the chamber walls. In a semi-auto, the case is jerked out before it can lose much heat at all.