I have a lovely custom stocked BRNO ZKK 600 that I got off a mate who is now deceased so I will never sell it. But I haven't hunted with it for about 10 years. I hunt deer (fallow, reds and a chital stag), pigs, the odd feral goat for meat, foxes and the odd feral cat and find that I usually grab a .257, .264 or .284 calibre rifle. I have 11 rifles covering those three calibres so plenty of choices to choose from. For bigger game like sambar deer I have a .35 Whelen and 9.3x62 so the .30-06 sort of sits in a gap. My .308, 8x57 and .303 are the same. Absolutely nothing wrong with the .30-06 but for the game I hunt a smaller cartridge seems to kill as well with less recoil. For pigs out west my Ruger Ultralight in .308 does the job very nicely. The short 20 inch barrel is handy for in the thick stuff and the pigs are shot under 100m so no real need for a 24 inch .30-06.
On the other hand my brother has a .30-06 and shoots everything with it from foxes up to red stag and wapiti in New Zealand. It's his do everything round.
Mule Deer has written that older hunters tend to gravitate to smaller less recoiling rounds as they get older. I never really thought this applied to me but I have definately used smaller cartridges the last few years. I never made a conscious decision to but maybe I did it subconsciously. My .30-06 has a very trim little stock with a 1/2 inch recoil pad and recoil with a 180gn bullet at 2875 fps is quite noticeable.
Last edited by Elvis; 01/02/21.
