Pursuant to my last post, is a 70 or 85 yard advantage in fps and fpe really much of an advantage? Maybe - it depends on the kind of game you hunt and the country you hunt them in. When we hunt antelope, the land is wide open and animals may be (and often are) found in any direction. With deer in the sage it is the same story and we often hunt elk there, too - more so than in the woods - and they, too, can come from any direction. Let's do a little math.

In my last post, I provided QuickLOAD data for a .308 Win and a .30-06 using 180g Ballistic Tip bullets. For the .308 Win I used SAAMI 62KPSI pressure and for the .30-06 both SAAMI 60KPSI and non-SAAMI 62KPSI pressures. The SAAMI .30-06 was shown to have a 70 yard advantage in fps and fpe over the .308 Win and the 62KPSI .30-06 had a 85 yard advantage. If the game can come from any angle, we're talking about an advantage of 70 to 85 yards in radius for the .30-06. That adds up to a LOT of square yards.

How many here have hunted game in an area the size of a football field or smaller? I have, many times. Other times I can see to a horizon miles away. In any case let's use the area of a football field (1.32 acres, 57,600 sq ft or 19,200 sq yds including the end zones) for comparison purposes.

The Quickload data showed 2824fps for the .308 Win/180g BT, 2950fps for the SAAMI .30-06 and 2977fps for the 62,000PSI .30-06. At 100 yards the .308 Win can deliver 2650fps and 2807fpe to an area (circle) the size of 1.6 football fields. The SAAMI .30-06 can deliver that same velocity and energy to 170 yards for an area 2.89 times larger or equal to 4.7 football fields and the 62KPSI .30-06 to 3.52 times the area for 5.6 football fields. More importantly, even if you are not hunting a circle, the ratios remain the same for any pie-slice portion thereof.

What happens if the range is longer than 100 yards? Assuming a full circle, the area in football fields each cartridge can cover with the same fps and fpe as the .308 Win is shown in the table below
:
Code
Range                  .308     .30-06    .30-06+P
(.308/30-06/30-06+P)             
100/170/185             1.6       4.7       5.6
200/270/285             6.5      11.9      13.3  
300/370/385            14.7      22.4      24.3
400/470/485            26.2      36.1      38.5
500/570/585            40.9      53.2      56.0


When I'm sitting out in the sage, the last thing I'm going to complain about is a rifle that delivers the same payload to a far greater area, yet does it with manageable recoil. The .308 Win is no slouch of a cartridge but it is no more a .30-06 equivalent than the .30-06 can equal a .300 WM.

Coyote Hunter - NRA Patriot Life, NRA Whittington Center Life, GOA, DAD - and I VOTE!

No, I'm not a Ruger bigot - just an unabashed fan of their revolvers, M77's and #1's.

A good .30-06 is a 99% solution.