Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles 30-06 212 ELD StaBall 6.5

Well, my curiosity kinda got the best of me. Jorey and I, along with a few others were bad mouthing the old 30-06 and somebody put up some charts and I got to looking at them and thought maybe the 06 has some steam to push some of the newer higher BC’ed bullets. So I went out for a ride on the scoot and stopped at my local bait and bullet store to see what they had. I scored 7lbs of the VV N570 powder, 8lb jug of Staball 6.5, a box of 212 ELD X and a box of Sierra 300 SBT for my 375.

It’s nice to have bags!



So off to home I went.

I sized up some fired Lapua cases and measured the distance to the lands in my P64 with an ELD. Went 3.415 to the lands. I said to myself, this just may work. I know my guns functions best at 3.4 or under so they’ll have a little jump. I checked Hodgdons data and started with their minimum charge and fired it over the Magnetospeed.

50 grains was the min




That went 2400 so I kept loading 1 and shooting see where it went. Well, I pushed past their max load, which I wouldn’t suggest for new loaders, but having an accurate chrono makes me feel okay with loading to their speeds and since it’s loaded to about 59k PSI I knew I had a little wiggle room at the top.

I stopped at 58 which is a full 4 grains over their max change and almost 100 FPS faster. So once I had some data I wanted to work in the 2650-2700 range.

I dropped back to 56 and went up to 57.6 and came up with two nodes in there that look pretty good.




I loaded 6 rounds each of 56.5 and 57.3.



Just for notes if you’re tracking I also used CCI250’s for a primer.

So I haven’t ran it through a calc yet, but a .676 BC doesn’t fair too bad at distance. And 2700 will never tear one up.

I think you could do about the same with a 280 and the 180 ELD as well which’ll whoop them 06 some but they aren’t too far off.

Hopefully I can shoot it soon and I’ll report back. It’d be kinda neat if they shot decent. That’s a pretty powerful combo really and not horribly slow either. I can’t imagine many elk or deer that’d shrug one off and if they shot decent I’d be willing to take it into elk country.

I took both of the loads directly to 300 last night. It’s been wicked hot out here so I snuck out when the temp finally dropped to about 90.

56.5 was first up



I was pretty danged pleased with this. So I gave the rifle a little time to cool down and shot the next charge.

57.3



Pretty decent overall. I may try to shorten this one a little as it looks like I have a bit of 2-1 going on but overall I’m pretty happy with the combo.

It’s a fairly light rifle, right at 8lbs or so, so I’m about at my max as far as accuracy. Meaning, I don’t think I could do much better than how the rifle was shooting anyhow.



I’ll shorten the next couple loads up a little and see what happens but I’d be pretty happy to hunt this load.

This was also the guns first run out after the Tubbs Final Finish so it seems like it’ll shoot. The Tubbs saved this rifle from a trip to the gunsmiths to become a Whelen...

What stock pattern is that?

Great report, appreciated.

Damn good stuff Big Buddy, you're on the verge of finding out what I did the first time I loaded 200gr Accubonds to 2700 fps in my old '06 then heard them slam 500 yard steel LOL, that old Warhorse can still carry some serious freight my Friend.

Hunters EDGE I think?



No problem.



For sure Gunner, my thoughts were the 212 is an easy expander and since this load will never strike faster than 2700 it shouldn't act badly either.

It'll load a camp meat pole Buddy.

Looks great Scottty. So is that the troubled pre 64 you were telling me about. Looks like its shooting damn well now.

That's the one BSA. Tubb's saved it as a 30-06 awhile longer.

Thats very cool man. I should run some of those in one of my fwts. Looks like it did the trick. Your rifle looks great. I like that hunters compact on the fwt's. Very good combination.

Yeah, they are worth the 30 bucks to try out on a barrel you otherwise can't get to do much. This is the 2nd one I have done and made excellent shooters out of them both. Now, I can shoot and shoot them and they just keep laying them in there!

Saved the old 338, I was just about to rebarrel that old copper mining mother.

It’ll be the day when you carry a 30-06 during elk season!

Scotty that looks like a heck of an elk rifle.
That's a 10 twist barrel right ?

It is a nice package. It's the standard 22" Featherweight, a 59 I believe.



Hey man, you never know. I wouldn't be scared to run one of those 212's into an elk.

with a 24" barrel you can get 2800 fps. with a .676 BC you can resolve any hunting situation that arises. that load is better then old 300 Win Mag loads for distance cause the bullets did not have that high BC

For sure I’d put a 212 into an elk out of a 30-06. Can’t get it to go fast enough to perform poorly.

Looking good!

I'm sure he will. Although, his trusty 338 wont be far away. The 30-06 hammers elk too.. Especially with heavier pills like the 200gr partition..

Great stuff indeed. I just ran a batch of my basic 150 grain deer/coyote loads for an old 24" Remington 721 and have been thinking about a 200+ grain load.

Hey Scotty! Try some Barnes 150 TTSX/6.5 StaBall and see what you get? I'm going to try it, but I'm starting out with 59gr and stopped at 61gr for a trial run. I just need my rifle back from the Smith! ha