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

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.

what i learned from all this is i just need to stick with what i know: my M700 in 280 Remington, and the Conquest 3-9x40; and complement the setup with a good rangefinder. by good i mean something super accurate and repeatable out to 300 yards. i doubt i will ever take a shot beyond that at a big game animal.

what i learned from all this is i just need to stick with what i know: my M700 in 280 Remington, and the Conquest 3-9x40; and complement the setup with a good rangefinder. by good i mean something super accurate and repeatable out to 300 yards. i doubt i will ever take a shot beyond that at a big game animal.

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.

My pick is M700 Long Range in 30-06, Burris with Ballistic Plex reticle, Federal 180 grain blue box or Premium Partition.

I haven't reread the whole thing to see what was said before, but if 300 yards is going to be your outer limit then you're more than well equipped with a 280 topped by a 3-9x40. You won't be needing an upper end rangefinder either.

I’m going howa or vanguard in either clambering in whichever configuration offered the shortest barrel on either one. Weaver scope with mildot reticle (.25mildots) in Talley lightweights. Hornady precision hunter and enough of it to get dope to 600 and I’d go hunt. Mildot reticle because of its familiarly to my eyes, user friendliness in low light, my ability to range targets with it, and either cartridge will get to 600 using milholds from the reticle, I’m guessing either/ both would be in the 4.2-4.6 mils low at 600 ballpark, Additionally It’s Pretty/very easy to range targets in the mountains with a gps map and compass and since those weren’t excluded from the packing list...


A lot You guys with your milquads etc are all hot and bothered about matching turrets, which is great, and how easy they are to zero, which is great. But the ability to range a target is truly where it’s at. Having that protractor/ ruler that allows you to measure angles is so much more than just holds, or corrections. If holds and corrections were all we concerned with- moa reticle and turrets is fine, the disadvantage with moa is that while it’s an angle measurement just as mils is and as such can be used to measure distance as well- because it’s not metric and all based on tenths, it’s very much more difficult for a brain dead like me to use...


The easiest most straightforward explanation I can give and hopefully someone more eloquent (I’m a demonstrator not an orator) can pick this up and tunnwith it.

Understanding that 1 mil subtends a meter @ 1000m or 1km, we can observe through our scope how many mils and fractions of mils a target of known dimensions subtends- and thereby establish a distance to it. So if your 1 meter target looks like a mil when it’s 1k away, if it’s twice that size it’s half that far. If it’s 3times that size it’s 1/3 as far. If it’s 4 times that size it’s a quarter of the way there.


It goes like this. Stalking through the timber I notice that the branches on the spruce up to about my waste are dead with no tips. Just sticks about 18” long justting our from the stem. Huh. I tire of the walk find a good place to sit and glass as the day begins to fade. I whip out my gps, map, and compass. With my map, I establish that the near side of the park I am glassing is about 400meters away, and that the far side is about 600. I spot a bull tucked up in the tree line and anticipate where he is likely to emerge. (We are going with the simplest math possible now for the sake of being straightforward)

I get in the prone- take up a prone e supported position on my ruck- locate the bull, breath a little and then- needing to refine my range to the bull I measure the hiefth of the dead spruce limbs (preestablished @1meter by environmental observation) and find that the live limbs start 2 mils up the tree. The bull is 500meters out and I’m holding on the 3rd mildot, good night Irene.

Seems like you’d better bring you’re rangefinder Dave.

Here’s another one. Pull out gps map compass and protractor. Plot own position on map. Using compass shoot azimuth to animal meat. Plot that azimuth from your own position. Utilizing your eyeballs, ID the piece of terrain your quarry occupies. Plot that point in the azimuth. Measure the distance between them with a strait edge. Hold that up to the map scale. You have now established a range to your target.