Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters How are bolt action 308 and 30-06 sales holding up...

Here in the north amongst the riflemen I know I see in order of popularity....223/556, 308/7.62 as the 1-2. 6.5 cm or anything .264 frankly lacks far behind. It’s all about the Middle aged men playing out their tactical fantasies. Not my cup of tea at all...I’m a hunting/shooting type into classic guns.

Personal implications based on preferred hunting cartridges? Tale as old as time MD. You know that better than any of us!

Me? I’m a .308 win or 7x57 man LOL. I live in the past

Pretty hard to beat for overall hunting needs. I always recommend a 30-06 for a one gun hunter here. With proper bullet selection it is good for antelope to moose.

308 damn it!

Your Weatherbys are in big trouble..........

So my 264 is safe??

Why not? Get one and a case of 147’s, or load for it if you want, put one of those new fangled turret scopes on it and do some LR, live a little!

Get one in walnut,CRF with a Hensoldt on top so you don’t get ran clean out of the country club.

PREXACTLY !


Jerry

And I thot I had a jackpot of deer tags at 6 ! I normally punch 3-4 / year but have
tagged out some years.

Since my boys are gone, the wife & I can’t eat 6 much less 11.

Every year I give 1 - 1 1/2 deer to my Uncle & Aunt where I hunt.
I also share 2 or 3 with ‘older’ hunter friends that can’t hunt like they used to.

Good luck on 11 tags.

Jerry

I have always seen tons of used 30-06 rifles for sale in my area. Lately, I have been seeing a fair amount of used 308 bolt actions for sale.

I interpreted that to mean ZERO too.


The gun industry is making guns for the people who buy them.

Then you were RONG on another point too.

Just in case you can’t intrepret that —- nunya means it’s none of ya bizness.


Jerry

To you it may read "Too many according to my wife. Christiansen who?" or "Too many to recall. :D" or "none of ya bizness".

Given the context, it means NONE.

The industry of manufacturing and marketing centerfire sporting arms would cease, if they catered to a market who's idea of the perfect rifle is one that, by definition, can only be bought used.

And Model 70s and Browning Safaris...Then again, I wouldn't own a 6.5 Creed or a 45/70 on a dare.... and you already know about 700s...
Why? I can shoot as far as i want with my Model 70s or Brownings. And WTF does the country club bullshit come into the equation?

My wife and I only have room for 3 or 4 deer, so I give the rest away to the guys who farm our ground and to HUNTERS HELPING THE HUNGRY. 4 of my tags are for the RIVER GMA that cost $14 each and allow me to take 2 deer. The others are 2 buck tags and 1 season's choice antlerless tags that cost $37.50 each. My son and a friend each have a buck tag and a River tag, so they are hoping to take 3 deer each.

The best thing about the RIVER tags is that they are inexpensive and allow me to take 2 deer for $7 each, so I can use several different rifles and/or loads every year and they are good during 3 different seasons, 10 days in October, 10 days in November, and 15 days in January. Although there are a limited number of RIVER tags, they never sell out, so I can buy them on-line and print them at home if I decide that I want to shoot more deer.

I'm probably more interested in volume deer shooting 'cause deer were hard to find in ME/NH/VT when I was growing up. You had to hunt hard and look just to see a deer, much less tag 1, so I'm making up for those lean years.

I have my young child and my wife in the house and we go through 3 a year at the minimum and I process my own and use everything but the snouts!

My freezer broke last year and we lost all of our meat...several hundred pounds. Needless to say I wouldn’t want to be a deer in front of me this year LOL

I also struck out and didn’t get a bear or elk tag 🤬

An update to 260 & Quak

My wife also can take 6 deer so it’s possible I could take 12 but
I’m not that greedy. < grin>


Jerry

I only own one 30 cal. and it's a 1959 built JC Higgins 51-L 308 that is mostly used for cast bullet shooting. My "big game" hunting these days is 99% whitetail and an occasional antelope when I can draw a tag. The ol 270 and 7-08 mostly sit at the back of the safe anymore, lighter calibers just seem more suited to the quarry. 257 Roberts, 243, and that oddball 25 MD was talking about get by far the most use. It just doesn't seem useful to pick up another cartridge so similar to those I'm already setup for, especially since I'm not into long range games.

In the past few years, I've sold two FN m98 bolt guns ( JC Higgins M50) , one a 30-06, the other a 338-06. I gave my niece a Howa 1500 actioned 308 Win (SW 1500).

In the same time I purchased two used Win m70 BACO sporters ( one an Extreme Weather), one used BACO m70 featherweight 30-06 (sold it 6 months later. I just like the sporter version better). Picked up a used Tikka T3 308 Win Varmint ; blued 24" bbl). Sold off my 357 mag revolvers, a Ruger 44 Special, and S&W m41.

I don't ask for top dollar prices when I sell ( but also don't give them away) so things have sold quick enough for me. I am slowly thinning the herd by eliminating some calibers. Luckily I am in no hurry to sell or "have to" raise cash. So far, so good.

Overall, the market is soft, but there are always people out there, with money, looking for quality stuff for fair prices. People who bought in a panic , at the top of the market are having trouble recouping their purchase prices, so the market is very soft for them.

You need discipline when buying and selling. That has never changed.

Sales are good for .308 and 30-06, still out selling the .270 ten too one!

Me, I like 'em all. It's fun to shoot different calibers and I have rifles chambered for a dozen or so center fire cartridges.ranging from.223 to.375. But for most hunting in North America, it probably doesn't matter much which of those cartridges are used except for personal preference. My first hunting rifle was a .30-06 and I still use one pretty regularly, but I also have a 6.5 Creedmoor which is fun to shoot and is a great low recoil hunting cartridge. The most important factor hasn't changed, and that's hitting the target in the right place.