Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles .308 or 30-06, and what is your bullet choice?

It seems that both the 30-06 and .308 are very popular amongst the hunting crowd. Which of the two cailbers would you pick and what bullet choice/ construction would you use for hunting big game , The usual deer, elk, black bear, moose. I would like to pick up either of the calibers but I would only like to use one bullet for all my hunting needs.

Thanks in advance!

That is an easy one. Barnes 168gr TTSX. Fast and flat shooting, dependable controlled expansion, and DEEP (as in almost always a pass through) penetration. I may have the 30/06 you seek, a BRNO. PM incoming.

TTSX, but in the 130 grain flavor.

PM sent on my BRNO ZKK 600 with many very cool features including pop up peeep sight blended into the rear scope base for quick use and access if wanted/needed. Also a VERY slick Mauser action with single set trigger and integral scope bases.

Any partition

Mark,

How close is the ZKK 600 to the CZ 550? Online, they look almost identical.

DF

30-06 and the 190 gr. Hornady BTSP. Hornady sales folks say they will be making more of them this summer.

Make mine a 308 (even though I love the '06 as well), and the 155gr. Scenar.

I'd personally get a .308 because I prefer short action rifles, either would work just fine though.

I would use two bullets, one for deer, and one for the rest.

For .308, I'd use 150 gr Nosler Ballistic Tips for deer, and the 150 gr Barnes TTSX for the rest.

For .30-06, I'd use the Nosler 168 gr Ballistic Tip for deer, and the Barnes 168 gr TTSX for the rest.

30/06 and 165 Nosler Partition.

If looking for a lightweight the 308 makes more sense.

I just picked up an 06 and will likely load 155 Scenars. I'd do the same with a 308.

'06 Tikka will go 7.25# all done. Montana might even be lower.

.308 or .30-06; either way you can't go wrong. I have a 30-06 that is my "do it all" hunting rifle, and load the 168 gr Nosler Ballistic Tip in it @ approx 2900 fps.

That projectile has a very high BC so it shoots flat and very thick jacket so it'll do nicely on anything short of a brown bear. I call it my "one load to kill them all".

A 308 Win would yield perhaps 100-150 fewer FPS and there aren't any big game animals that'll feel the difference. If I were to do it all over again I'd likely build a 308 Win & have directed several good friends toward it.

Like I said, either one ain't ever a bad choice.

which ever you like best unless you want to shoot 220's.

165 grain Nosler BT for most everything out of my .30-06 if I need something tougher I go to the Partition or Accubond. I'm going to try the 125 grain NBT and 130 grain TTSX in my daughters .300 Savage just to save on recoil.

308 with 150 grain TSX for everything.

Worked fine on this hog:

Only elk on the menu for me. 30-06 and 180 Accubond.

In my .30-06 I load 165 gr partitions.
In my .308 I load 150 gr partitions.

one big advantage of the 30-06 is you can load it down to 308 rounds or you can take it up to almost 300 win mag rounds.

I have been reading a lot on the 180grbTSX bullets 180gr nosler partition bullets and also the Remington 180gr core lotk PSP.

I have both but if I could only have 1 it would be the -06. There is no substitute for powder capacity as someone else said, you can load down. OTOH you can't load up.
Especially if you want to use heavier bullets the -06 has the edge because over about 165gr bullets, the 308 will be at some disadvantage.
Since you are anticipating some larger game like moose, you may want to load some of those heavier bullets.
Don't get me wrong, if you really like a short action the 308 will work but the -06 gives you more options. Of course so does the WinMag or the RUM or...