Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Surely none of you are crass enough to use a 30-06 on deer!

Why don't you take off the steel butt pad. Put it in your gun cabinet & use a Pachmayr Decelerator Slip On recoil pad. That's I do on a shotgun for my wife to turkey hunt with.

My 7600 has a plastic butt plate and i got a slip on limbsaver pad - try wally world. It is very nice, softens the recoil. also you could try loading down/reduced load to get to a 300 savage or 308 level round.

I hate to say this is the first season I haven’t owned a 30-‘06. I filled my tag with my 6.5 Creedmoor this year and my 280AI was back up. I will have another ‘06 and it’s just a matter of time. It’s truly hard to beat a 30-‘06 for deer hunting when you stoke it with 150-165 gr cup and cores at reasonable velocity. My favorites are 150 partitions around 2900 and 165 inter loks at about 2800 and change.

If I had to snivel most of my 30-06 rifles shot better with 165 to 180 grain bullets than the 150's. Not horribly better but my two current 30-06 rifles are easy under an inch rifles with 165 and 180 grain bullets but with the 150's they hover around just over an inch to 1 1/4 inches for three shots. The Weatherby Vanguard does it with 5 shots. With both rifles and 165 gr, Ballistic Tips and Sierra BTHP's powered By IMR 4350 they are awesome shooters. I guess I could suffer along with 1 1/4 inch groups and 150 gr. Partitions if I have to. As for factory ammo I have recovered more 150 gr. Corelokts than any other bullet but every bullet was recovered from a dead deer. Too bad that Remington stopped selling the Corelokts at the bulk prices.

Feeling pretty old for sure, 62 is getting up there.

Well, only once, a modest buck west of Ft Collins in 1980. Seemed to do all right at 25 feet.

Then it went north to Alaska, and it and a couple others have done serious damage to a number of moose, caribou, sheep and black bear since, and counting....

That first one even killed a ptarmigan once

True Dat! I'm crass enough to run a 165 grain Hornady Interlock SP in my Browning X-Bolt and 180 grain Hornady Interlock RN in my Remington 7600 Carbine. Didn't shoot anything with them this year, in fact I'm sad to report that I didn't even hunt with the 7600 this year. From what I've seen, a 165/168 grain bullet in a 30-06 knocks the snot out of deer!

I have three, they are fantastic.

Shot one for years and killed a lot of game with it. 165 corelocs and interlocks made a lot of meat. Started shooting it on paper and got disgusted with my cold bore accuracy so now I do most of my big game killing with a .300 WM and my old .30-06 is now rebarreled to a .257 Roberts AI. Over the past several years I can only think of one shot with the .300 wm that I would have been hesitant to take with the .30-06 and even that was doable if the .06 was accurate enough.

I just picked up a Husqvarna 1640 barreled action in .30-06 that if it is accurate and I can restock reasonably may find its way onto some hunts in the next few years. If it proves accurate but too boring I do have .30 Gibbs dies and may punch it out.

For some reason I have trouble hanging on to them. The latest, and hopefully last, is a well-worn Husky 640 (FN) that came with a Lyman 4x. Needs a bit of TLC, but I got it field-ready. After getting it zeroed, the last four went into an inch using my standard '06 whitetail load, 150gr NPT over 46gr H4895, pretty much a .308, but still a bit hotter than the load the '06 made its bones with way back when, with a better bullet to boot. That load has shot very well in the last three rifles I tried it in.

I said it needs some TLC, but the inside of the barrel looks new. I gotta put down at least one with the new Barrett first, but then this one deserves a turn.

Used a 7600 carbine for years until I sold it to a neighborhood kid.. An obnoxiously loud flame thrower but I liked it. So much in fact, that I just bought another.

I never really had much of a desire to have an 06 and then I inherited a left-hand Savage 110, when my fil died. It is a real nice-looking rifle and so I thought that I would load up some Hornadys and kill some deer with it. It shoots the 150 Interlocks at 3000 fps extremely well. I have lots of opportunity, as I do depredation work on my neighbor's farm. That 150 hammers deer and I have shot a number of them with it. One evening, six does appeared in a field that I was watching. Only three made it out.

I have become a real fan of the 6.5s-Creed and .260. I was considering making the 06, a 6.5-06, but it shoots so well, that I decided to get some more casings and build up my 06 stash! The one thing that I do not like, is that rifle kicks worse than my 7 mags. That original hard butt plate is no joke! I may have to cure that.

I tried to get my newest 30-06 to like the same charge weight of IMR 4895 and 150 gr. Partitions. After several variations on bullet seating depth and still no joy ( 1.4" groups) I switched to IMR 4350 and got a load that will put three Partitions in the magic inch but velocity is in the 2900 fps range. Good thing it has a good recoil pad but more than needed for a treestand load.

It's amazing how much meat you could make using a rifle with disgusting accuracy. There may be a lesson here.

I also could never quite make IMR4895 work with 150 gr. .30-'06 loads. H414 and IMR4064 did pretty good, but not as well as IMR4350 like you found.

Although I've killed more deer with a 30-06 than any other caliber I haven't used it in the last 5 seasons. Too many rifles too few tags. I took deer with a 6.5 swede, 22-250 and 35 Remington this season. That said if I was limited to one rifle it would be a 30-06.

I’ve killed more WT with 150 HSP than 165s.
When I used the 150s , JOC load of 52.5 gs IMR 4064 gave +/- 2900 fps and very good accuracy. That Load was also in a Lyman manual.

When I changed to 165 HBTSP I Load H 205 — on my last pound — for 2950 +/- . H 4350 is up next.

Jerry

Yep, I have said several times that I should have just kept shooting animals instead of paper

wink_man,

Downright PURTY rifle!!!!

I currently have 3 Model 760 rifles in .30-06 & none that have wood that handsome.

Fwiw, my "truck gun" is a Model 760 (with a 2X scope) from AUG 1957 & my usual load for it is "Mexican match", i.e., Lake City Match, with the FMJ bullet pulled & replaced with a JSP.
(That rifle shoots FAR better, even with the good scope, than I do with my 72YO eyes. - Thankfully, the ranges to hunt WT/exotics in South TX are short & the deer are numerous, everywhere.)

yours, tex

I like 59 grains of IMR 4350 with a Nosler Partition. That load works well in all three of mine. H4895 works well in my Garand.