Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles I Finally Bought a 30-06

Nice rifle!

Needs a bayonet before charging the brier patch.

Nice!

If there was a left-hand variant with a Type C stock, I'd own one.

Just got back from some rock shootin'. This thing is straight UBER.

Does anybody know what load the sights are regulated for exactly? I'm using a moderate load of H4895 and the 155gr. Scenar.



Travis

Maybe try 150 and 3031?

I meant speed wise.

I think they shot 150's back then but I'm not 100% on that.



Travis

You picked up a good one there. mighty fine 03A3. They don't come any better. Hope it outlasts you in your house.

A load using a 175gr bullet at 2650-2700 hit close to POA in my 1903 using the older-style ladder sight. H4895 is the way I roll too.

I also like the Oregon Trail 190gr cast bullet over 5744, 25gr hits POA and is a nice soft shooting load.

150 at 2700 is pretty close to the original ammo. My 175gr load is intended to dupe the old match ammo that used 172gr bullets.

Try 53.0 of IMR4350 and Nosler 180 BT. My springfield eats em.
pretty pleasant load too.

Slacker,owned 6-.30-06's and still have 3 of them in the gunsafe.

Never would have seen that coming from a Tikka CTR 308 shooter with a can.

I always thought it was kind of cool shooting game with the same cartridge your granddad or great granddad was killing Nazis with. Some of the Nazis could have been gay(we will never know) but the 30-06 killed them too.

Nice rifle dude.

The 03-A3 was a WW2 version of the '03 Springfield rifle.

We used the M-2 load in WW2 which was 150/152-grain bullet at roughly 2,800 fps.

Cool rifle Flave but too bad it's in such a lame cartridge.


The 30-06....

Too big for rabbits and too small for elephants.

There were a few iterations of ammo for the 1903. I'm no expert by any means. There was a 220gr round nose at about 2300 fps, then a 150 gr at 2700-2800 fps, then there was a 172gr at about 2600 fps.

Then there were the different iterations of the 1903 itself. I don't have a clue what ammo the sights were calibrated for in any or all of the different variations.

But good enough for everything in between.

IIRC, from an old Jack O-Connor article, the original .30-03 load was with a 220-grain bullet at 2,200 fps.

Then in 1906 they developed the .30/06 load with a 150-grain bullet at 2,700 fps.

The M-1 load, not the rifle, was developed in the 1920s and it was a 172-grain bullet at 2,600 fps.

Then the M-2 load was developed in the 1930s, for the M-1 rifle, and it was a 150-152-grain bullet at 2,800 fps. That's the load that we used in WW2.

Thanks, that's good detail.

I would assume the Garand sights were calibrated for the M2 load. But the 1903A3, maybe the M2, maybe the M1 load?

Exactly.

That's a good question because the Springfield rifle was used by many competitors at the National Matches between WW1 and WW2.
I'd think that the 172-grain load would be better at long range due to the better ballistic coefficient.