Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles 220Grain 30/06

Anyone here use a 220grain 30/06 load for hunting ?

Just wondering what your results were with the heavy load?

I've been using the 220gr Hornady because it's the most accurate handload in my 06 plus hunt brown bear country. Recently switched to the eld-x 220gr for a bit better ballistics but wonder whether it is a good choice for a 10ft brown bear situation. Have had excellent performance with the 220gr Hornady rn on moose.

I don’t reload.... yet! But was looking at the Federal factory offering.

Thank you for posting on the Hornady 220g ELD-X. I wasn't aware that there was a spire point 220g bullet available for 30-06. My rifle has problems feeding the round nose 220g bullet. The specification is interesting if not a little confusing. The ELD-X looks to be a good performer in comparison to the old round nose bullet.

I shot a young feral steer with a 220-grain Remington CoreLokt RN out of a 95 Winchester one time. He was facing me and I put the bullet through his brisket. He died within a few feet of where I hit him.


Okie John

I'd sub a Nosler for the Hornady. I've seen some erratic stuff with the bigger RN Hornady bullets in 6.5 and 30 caliber.

I had a friend, now deceased, but he used nothing but the Remington factory 220CL out of his Mod 742...for East Tx deer! He had no problems and it didn't tear up deer like the 150CL I was using!

Feral Steer, sounds tasty.

Wondering about that myself.

How does a male feral bovine become a steer?

Many years ago I found a partial box of 220gr. RN ammo that my father had purchased sometime in the late 1960s. He had killed a black bear the year before he purchased these and felt he needed a little more bullet than a 180gr in the future. Of course he did not, but that was the thinking back then.

Anyway I was young and poor at the time so I used those 220gr RNs in my Rem 760 on a couple of whitetail deer at very close, 30 yards or so, distance. As you might expect I had poor expansion and complete penetration, and a dead deer within 75 yards or so. Both shots, as I remember were thru the lungs and as would be expected I had very little meat damage, but the deer died just fine.

I think they worked on the deer because of the close range of the shot and the high velocity at that distance did allow some expansion. I would suspect if I had shot those deer at something over 150 yards or so the results could have been no expansion at all and a long tracking job, but I would bet I would still find a dead deer at the end of the blood trail.

What is your cartridge overall length. It may not be the same for your rifle but I ran into the same issue with round nose bullets in a Springfield 30-06 and a Winchester pre 64 rebored to 35 Whelen. I had seated to the cannelure and found they didn't feed well. When I seated them out to. I believe, 3.340 (I 'm at work at a remote site and away from my books) for COAL. That corrected the feeding problems in both rifles. You may have different results with your rifle. That worked for mine.

My rifle is a Mauser 98 Sporter, Flaig's Custom. The rifle probably has been tinkered with by many gunsmiths in the last 70 years. I've added scope mounts, Timney trigger, Buhler scope safety, 1" black recoil pad and pillar bedding. It shoots well now and looks great. I will continue to study the RN feeding problem until I'm sure of the cause. The magazine is a trap door that has been converted to blind.

Why such a heavy bullet?

He gets cut before he escapes from the pasture and takes up residence in a coffee orchard that belongs to someone other than his owner.

Unfortunately the meat was full of pesticides and other chemicals from feeding in the orchard, so I gave it to the picking crew.


Okie John

Why not?

Mono y mono, amigo....

One summer back in the '70s, my brother and I worked for the Forest Service counting trees and estimating board feet of lumber for upcoming timber sales. We worked within grizzly country of western Montana. Our supervisor had us qualify shooting Remington 760 slide action rifles chambered for 30-06 and loaded with 220 grain core-lokt ammo. We were required to fire five shots at a 6 inch diameter target at a distance of 25 yards. Despite the stout recoil, we qualified okay. We often spotted grizzly tracks along remote stream banks but never had a close encounter (praise God). Except for the initial qualification, neither of us fired a shot all summer. The bears left us alone.

Sherwood

Ah!
Thanks for the "rest of the story".

Gets his nutz shot off!!

He asked a question of why the use of a heavy bullet not whether he could.