Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Is 30-06 a dead round for you & if so why?

It's not dead in the macro sense. Good cartridge but I'll never buy one for me.

Just don't have a hole in the arsenal it would fill. If I "need" more than my 7-08, I likely need A LOT more which would be beyond the 30-06.

I own 7 of them at the moment and have a Dillon 550 set up to feed them.

One of mine gets 1" groups at 300 yards.

It appears to be alive and exceptionally well.

I don't give a crap what anyone else shoots.

Winchester just introduced a thing called the "Winchester XPR Renegade Long Range SR."

It's only offered in .243, 6.5 Crud-more, 7-08, .308, .270, .300 WSM, and .300 PRC.

Winchester is stupid.

Makes a lot of sense. And I could write the same thing and swap places with the calibers. I have a .30-06 and can't justify a 7mm//08.

Don’t forget the 6.8 Left Coast Special. The 1:10 twist on the 243 is a good way to roll! I don’t know which is more annoying, the long range crap or the 6.5 Flatbrim.

If I lived somewhere I could hunt elk and/or moose from home, that is, without going on a trip somewhere, I'd probably get one. Currently my .30 caliber rifles include .300 WSM, .308, .303 Savage and .30 carbine. The .300 WSM or .308 would be more than adequate for elk or moose (as would some other rifles I have) but if one and/or the other were on my regular annual agenda I would prefer to have a .30-06 over anything else.I'm not claiming it's the best or anything, just what I would prefer to have.

Shot my first Pronghorn with a 'used' Western Field 30-06 ($100 pawn shop)....fitted with a 3-9 Bushnell Sportview and a Harris bipod.

1980.....a rather addictive and costly trip, big panoramic picture.

Any western big game hunt since, is compared to that one.

There is nothing wrong with the 30-06. But I will readily admit I have never owned one and doubt if I ever will. Grew up shooting a 7mm Mag and it has done everything I needed a big game rifle to do and if I need to step up from the 7mm to a bigger caliber I'm going to either my 9.3x62 or my 375 H&H. Just not enough difference between 7mm and 30 cal.

I've had several over the years and liked everyone of them. I seem to sell or trade them off because I have that lefty 300 H&H and the 30-06 just duplicates it, not that that's a bad thing. Were I to have to start over again and choose one rifle, knowing what I know today, it would most likely be a 30-06 with 200 grain Partitions and would not feel under gunned or over gunned, except maybe for fur hunting. I regret parting with a fine old 721 that liked to think it was a varmint rifle. It liked to shoot tiny little clusters with just about every bullet I tried.

I have a couple 06, and enough bullets, powder, primers to feed them for my lifetime. Like the 30-30, it will live on forever.

Not if they want to sell a bunch of guns.

I used to hunt with a 300 WSM. After killing a bunch of elk over the years, I realized that not a single one of them couldn't have been shot just as easy with a 30-06 that weighs a lb. less. I'm to the age where that lb. makes a difference on a hunt in steep country so I switched back and am still killing elk.

I just checked for you. RWS offers 15 cartridges, LVE 3 cartridges, Denel PMP 3 cartridges,......That is on three different continents. I did not check USA because you can probably buy ammo for that caliber in hardware stores or farm supply stores. This is one of the most popular hunting cartridges in the world.
Nothing to worry about.

After playing with a whole bunch of oddball calibers, and super mags ect.. I figured a .223, 6.5cm, and a 30-06 pretty much cover almost 98% of everything that I have used a hunting rifle for. Now do I have those, kinda. But its what I end up buying for my Sons, to use. Later if they become a rifle loony they can get others.

Talking with some guys about what they started with most of them were .270, 7mm RM and 30-06 as teenagers. We probably would have done much better with anything between a .243 and 7mm-08. Quite the flinch gets developed when from we were raised on.

That being said I will always have a 30-06, and one is set as a backup rifle, with Win factory180g loads at all times.

I think as long as we are firing brass cased ammunition the 30-06 will never fall into obscurity.

The 30-06 will never be dead to me but I won't use it after my Moose hunt in 2022.

You can add the potbelly wuss wannabes with techlights, atomic glasses & wizzbang 223 black rifles.

I can see younger people, small framed women and the disabled having trouble with a 30-06. Average size I'd say no if it was worked up to. Average size woman really does have a handicap, too long stocks. Of course we tend to give these people featherweight rifles. I had a Winchester 70 featherweight in 30-06. It shot 180's well. You just lost interest in standing behind it for very long.

My first centerfire rifle was a Savage 111 Chieftain 30-06 with a detachable magazine I bought in 1975 after high school graduation. It had high gloss, checkered walnut and bright blued steel. I've since bought and later sold rifles in just about EVERY caliber/cartridge from 223 to 45-70, but have never been without a 30-06. There are other cartridges that I now prefer, 7X57 being my favorite, but I will never be without a 30-06 and currently shoot a late 1970s push feed Model 70 with an early 1980s vintage Redfield 3-9 scope on it. It's one of those gun/scope combos that just "looks" right and shoots just about any 180 grain bullet into 1".