Back in the mid-2000's, I had some high-end modeling software that I needed to test at work. It was basically a very souped up version of the What-If function of Excel. I decided to feed it a large subset of Hodgdon's reloading database and asked it to find the best performance vs. recoil. I gave it the latitude to reduce up to 5% off the MAX load. I used Bekkar KOV rating as the decider of performance.
Bottom line: 30-06 was not the top choice. Nor was 270 WIN. You could tell that it when the model started zeroing in on what it thought was a good chamber/load, because it would seem to stall on one or the other for a long time.
35 Whelen held fascination. 7mm-08 held its attention It hardly glanced at 270 WIN and 7mm RM before moving on. 30-06 got a hard look, but it moved on.
If memory serves, a slightly off-MAX load of 280 REM was its final choice. I'd also say that having it point at 280 REM is not a hands-down thing. What it told me was that if you look at 280 REM and knock a couple of % off the MAX, what you get is a performance envelope that can be achieved by anything in that general vicinity. If you think about it, 280 REM, grain for grain of bullet weight is just a 30-06 modified to increase its Bekker KOV. If you think sectional density is a deciding factor, then 280 REM is the better cartridge. I heard a lot of opinions against Bekker KOV as a reasonable gauge of performance, but I did not have access to the modeling software long enough to try other formulas.
None of this had definitive answers. I never saw the Hand of God come down and point to one or the other. "The Greatest" out there is a highly subjective thing. I was favoring chamberings that had less recoil, and my target was whitetail deer. Another guy might say that speed trumps all. Still another wants the eat-up-to-the-hole performance that only a big bore can give. Another guy wants flatness of trajectory.
If you look on my rack, the largest number of deer rifles are in 30-06. My sons shoot 150 grainers. I shoot 165 grain. Of all the rifles we've tried 30-06 and 308 WIN have all the camp records and the highest number of DRT kills on whitetails. None of these are full house loads. They're meant to drop animals within 250 yards.
