Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Long Range Hunting 30-06 vs 6.5 Creedmoor, with contraints

LRFs are now in. Which LRF for <= $500?
turret twisting still a No Go.
which reticle in which set and forget scope?
thanks

I have a Leupld RX-1200 TBRw dna which I purchased new within your price range. It is preprogrammed with various ballistic curves to give direct readout of holdover. And of course, compensates for uphill or downhill angles.

what shrapnel said. sako 30-06 . or a Remington 700 mountain. I have both.

did some basic reading up on LRF,,, one of the common concerns seems to be them failing after three to five years, and even companies like Leupold not standing behind them... i sure don't want to be replacing an LRF every three to five years...

Stay away from Leupold and find a good used Leica!

What amazes me in this conversation is that people have become 100% dependent on laser range finders to determine range.

Those funny little squiggly things that clutter up the inside of an optic can be used to estimate range, using something called the "Mil relation formula".....

When the conditions do not allow for an LRF to work properly, you can still range the target.






Back to the original question, I could be quite happy with a lite stainless Tikka T3 30-06 with and SWFA MIL/MIL fixed 10X in Talleys shooting whatever 165 or 180 premium bullet it preferred.

30/06 yep
Tikka stainless lite yep
6x SWFA
sportsmatch mounts
Good factory ammo
Leica range finder
The world is your oyster and 500 suddenly seems close

I have a bushnell arc that;s 5-6 years old, and a new sig 2k. The bushnell gets used more because it was cheap and I don't mind risking it while hunting.

Yep, I would also go with the 700 LR but chambered for a 300 RUM. Cartridge with a 30-06 equivalent load ( 180gr Bullet )

rule of thumb i have heard often is a mature whitetail is 18" when measured vertically from base of back of neck at shoulder blades to chest hairs on the bottom... with a vital zone of 8 inches. i'd be hesitant to risk a range estimation with mil reticle at anything past 400 yards, given bullet drop past 400... but i think a mil reticle could provide a very fast range estimate, good enough, within 400 yards... i need to stop thinking this and just get out and shoot.

T3 in 30-06, M8 6x42, zero at 200 with 168 Barnes Vortex, 300 yard max range.

The Vortex ammo I chronographed over my Oehler 35P only recorded 2662fps which is incredibly slow for the 168gn bullet weight.
It shot just under the inch and would be fine for most hunting, but would not be my choice for a single load for everything at all hunting ranges for a .30/06.
John

My 30-06 is a pushfeed Win M70 FTW with a blindbox McMillan stock straight from the factory. It was sold to me cheap ($350 shipped) years ago because the owner was honest enough and it had a pitted barrel. Well I shot it and it's acceptable hunting accuracy out to 450 yards (handloaded 2nd's 180gr PT) so I left it alone. Has a 2.5x8 VariXIII with a Premier Reticle mildot. I'm getting ready to update my loads with new powders and 178gr ELD-X. If I can get above 2800fps with good accuracy the old 06 will have new life breathed into it. Oh old Leica 1200 LRF.

Don't Know how we ever killed anything before the range finder came out? You might try shooting enough to figure out how what ever rifle you are using shoots at what ever distance you think you are shooting. Rio7

Used/NOS Tikka T3 30-06 $500
Black Friday 3-9x42 MQ $450
30mm DNZ $65
Sig Kilo $400

I could really cut the rifle price in half with a used $250 Savage 111 or Marlin XL7.

I think I could get to the point of ranging comfortably with my reticle to about 600 yards. Past that I think things would get tricky without a pretty high confidence value for the size of the target. I calculate target sizes with my reticle regularly with known distances. Same equation but there is going to be more error when your estimated taret size is an input. With enough experience I'm sure things could be stretched out more but I doubt that many shooters can range a game animal (with reticle) at over 800 yards accurately enough to be confident of a first round hit in the vitals.

Why use a scope when you have iron sights. Why use a boat tail bullet when there are flat base. The point of a range finder is if you are in unknown territory why not use any advantage you can? At extended ranges if ou are using something that pushes a 140 grain bullet at about 2600 fps you better know how far it is. The same bullet at 3000 plus takes a lot of the guess work out. Happy hunting. Ed k

Just keep in mind that the least you want for hunting bears, as mentioned by the OP, is a long range riflescope unless the low end of the power is from 1x to perhaps 3x. And even at 3x you could not find the right spot to shoot on a moose at 20-30 yards (all you see is brown).

You have $700 for the rifle, $400 for the scope, and $100 for the rings. No after-market parts for the rifle other than a sling. No range finder. Factory ammo only; one load must do it all. Shooting prone from a backpack rest. Continental North America. Antelope, deer, moose, elk, caribou, sheep, goat, bison, wolf, and bears. The 30-06 or the 6.5 Creedmoor are your only two choices. KISS applies for all tie breakers. Once you step away from the plane, boat, or truck you are humping this rifle in - no horses, no ATV... Describe your medicine and tell me why. Describe how you set up your ballistic dope chart for the hunt.

OK, I'll play.
Pretty easy really.

Rifle: Used M70 Winchester Featherweight , in 30-06. Such rifles are available for around $700 all the time. 6.5 CM is an excellent caliber, but if the rules say I have only 1 choice of 2, so that would mean it's my only gun. Correct? Well the 30-06 beats the pants off the CM when it comes to a one-size-fits-all cartridge.

Ammo would be loaded a Nosler Partitions or some bonded core bullets in 180 grain, depending on what shot the best in that gun. Because the rules say Bison, moose (both of which I have hunted here in Wyoming as well as other places) and Bears (that means Grizzlies where I live) I would not even consider the 6.5CM if I could have a 30-06.

For the sake of this "answer game" I assume my ammo allotment would be unlimited. If not, the rules laid down here are not realistic because for the cost of about 7-10 boxes of ammo I can buy a basic hand-loading set, and so 'factory ammo only" is less realistic then "unlimited factory ammo" would be.

Scope would be a good 2X-7X, probably a Redfield, or one of the German Fixed 4X by Kaps if I could find one used for the required $400.

No ATV and no horses? That's how I have hunted about 75% of my life and that constitutes over 50 years of big game hunting in 9 states and 5 countries. No problem that I can't overcome and have not been overcoming for 1/2 a century.

Range card?

I zero at 200 yards and I know my drops at 300, 400 500 and 550. I don't shoot past that. I have when I was younger,( quite a few times) but I grew a brain and stopped doing it around 24 years ago. I have a self imposed limit of 500 meters now. (or "close to 550 yards", about 547 actually --- but that's close enough) In that time I have never had to keep my promise to myself because I have not ever needed to shoot past 450 yards on anything, anywhere, at any time, when I was hunting. Getting that close or closer is not hard. If it is, you need to learn to hunt more then you need to learn to shoot.

So a "range card" with your bullet drops is quite easy to make, when you select the load and chronograph it for true velocity. Within 1 month of shooting you would not need a card at all. You'd remember the drops out to 550 very easily.

Next you need to shoot enough in differing wind conditions to learn your drifts. Buying gizmos is a bad way to learn to shoot well, in comparison to firing a lot of ammo over a lot of different conditions, altitudes, angles and temperatures. So this comes back to my comment above about unlimited ammo or hand-loads. When I was in my teens I shot out the throat of my 270 Winchester and I did that in 3 years, starting with a brand new barrel. That rifle went from shooting under 1 MOA to about 3 MOA so I has a new barrel put in. I had to have the gun re-barreled when I was 18. I did it again and I re-barreled it myself when I was 29. It's now on it's 3rd barrel and has many thousands of rounds fired though that one too. I KNOW how to shoot that rifle well. Ammo is needed to shoot that much. Hand loads cost about 40% of factory loads.

So that's my answers.
My choices are my own and have the same amount of merit as anyone's, and no more.

I assume that's why the "answer game" was played here in the 1st place.

Sorry, Ray, that's simply not so. A typical 3x riflescope (whether fixed or variable) has a field of view at least 30 at 100 yards. This means that at 20 yards the FOV is 6 feet, more than enough so that not "all you see if brown." At 30 yards it's 1.5 times as wide as at 20, 9 feet. I know this not just from theory but by shooting big animals at those sorts of ranges with 3x. It's easy to pick the right spot.

Of course, if the magnification is less than 3x, the FOV is even larger.

I haven't tried it, but can a scope that is set a 3x be focused at 20 yards? In my relatively narrow view, in the bear and moose country where I live, I prefer a riflescope such as 1-4x, 1-7x, or 2.5-8x. I could be wrong, but a compromise must be made relating to riflescope power and the type of hunt one plans to do (long shots versus close shots, and small animals versus large ones (or even dangerous ones). A 1.5x riflescope delivers around 66-feet of FOV at 100 yards.

I have never been charged by a bear, but according to some hunters who have, the such FOV of a riflescope is reduced to nothing during a charge. I am a big chicken, so my riflescope is set at its lowest magnification during the moose season in Alaska.