If you're using 190-grain bullets in the .30-30, may I ask what powder and charge weight you employ? I have a Lee 200-grainer that I'd like to try in my H&R .30-30.
When it comes to shooting cast bullets in .30 cal's used for hunting, the heavier the better. There is a threshold velocity with any alloy that once exceeded velocity will fall off dramatically and leading will occur in the bore. With alloys suitable for expansion in game animals, that threshold is right around 2000fps, give or take. (There are many exceptions to that rule, I know, but is a decent rule of thumb.) It doesn't matter what the bullet weighs, it's the alloy that controls it- you get the same threshold whether it's a 100 grain or 200 grain bullet of the same alloy. Ergo, to achieve decent "killing power", one has to go heavy. (You still need flat noses, or hollowpoints, or at least round nosed bullets though. Cast lead spitzers don't expand as well.)
That's why the .30-30/.303 Savage can be loaded to factory ammo performance levels with cast bullets (at a small fraction of the cost of jacketed bullet ammo)- but one must do it with heavy(ish) bullets. You couldn't quite get there with 150 grain bullets cast soft enough to mushroom on impact. (The factories claimed 2000+ fps with 190 gr. .303 loads. I never realized better than 1900fps in my 1899H, and often less, back when I was hot to trot for chronoing everything I could get my hands on. My aforementioned hunting cast load squeezes that velocity.)
Obviously this can't be done with hotter cartridges- equaling factory ballistics with soft cast bullets that is. (Now don't start yammering about paper patching, powder coating, 2-part bullets, etc. We're talking basic no-frills stuff here.) That's not say you can't use these protocols in .300's, .308's, '06's, etc.- I have and will do so again. The thing is the performance level will be down in the .303/.30-30 class as a result.
What sent me down this path was something an old mentor preached to me. His name was Frank Marshall (who would be around 100 years old if he were alive), and he was an avid bear hunter in the Virginia Blue Ridge Mountains. His favorite bear medicine: a ratty old Savage 340 .30-30, shooting a soft cast 210 grain RN bullet, the old Lyman/Ideal 311284. Powder charge: all the old gov't surplus 4831 he could squeeze into the case. (You can't get enough of that super slow burning powder into a .30-30 case to get yourself in trouble.) Velocity probably didn't exceed 1800fps, give or take. More than a few bears, and a metric ton of deer, fell to that rig. That gun ought to be in a bear/deer hunting hall of fame. (He was an avid shooter/collector and owned many fine rifles, but that one was his "meat gun".)
Stop and think about it. These loads nip at the heels of the old .30-40 Krag government load of 220 grains/2000fps- and that load was considered to be King of the Hill for hunting for a long time (and in some quarters still is).
![[Linked Image]](https://i.imgur.com/K6DbHUKl.jpg)