Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting A very basic, common, .308 rifle setup

Not much wrong with a .308 Winchester for hunting. Especially in the timber. I started with one, and still occasionally use it. My back-up rifle is my Ruger I’ve had for 30 years. It’s bedded, has a trigger job, recoil pad upgrade, and a Leupold 3.5-10x40 VX-III. It’s a sub-MOA rifle with handloads.

Here's a link to the .308 135 gr. ER Cutting Edge Raptor. Check out the 01/04/2019 review, the bottom one. I wrote it.

I'm also impressed with Hammer bullets. They're expensive, like CEB's, but how many do we actually shoot at game. Practice with cheaper stuff.

https://cuttingedgebullets.com/308-135gr-er-extended-range-raptor

Rifle is a Kimber Classic with a Broughton 5C stainless barrel that replaced the OEM tube that didn't perform so well.

DF

I was impressed by the 150 gr Federal basic cup and core Blue Box bullet. A pretty good size buck at ~160 yards ran ~50 yards then crashed. A pass through.

I guess my 308 WIN experience is perverse compared to the rest of y'all. Don't take me wrong. I don't want it to seem like I'm throwing shade on the chambering. As with so much of my life, 308 WIN has come out with results "other than expected."

First off, my early exposure to 308 WIN was a bit crossed. I grew up going to a barber shop in Cincinnati. Ohio was a shotgun-only state. Therefore most of the opinions I heard about any centerfire rifle were from wannabes. In those days, the mid-Sixties, everyone seemed to have an opinion on things, and 30-06 was usually at the center: 270 vs. 30-06, 308 vs 30-06, etc. The shop I visited was filled with a bunch of 30-06 snobs. Later, well after college, I started shooting and hunting. The bunch of old guys that took me under their wing were all die-hard 30-06 guys. One was a WWII vet. Another was a Marine armorer. Another was a gun editor. I had to learn the catechism that 30-06 was IT.

If you go and look back in this august forum in early 2003, you will find the shaman being sold on the concept of a Savage 99. Honestly, I don't remember much of anything about the Savage 99 until I came here. However, it did not take much convincing. I acquired a Savage 99 that summer. I asked my buddy, Bob, the gun editor which chambering to get. He reluctantly pointed me at 308 WIN. His reasoning was that he was sure 300 Savage was going to be orphaned before too long.

Side note: If you see a pattern of the shaman seeming to get a lot of well-meaning bum steers in his life, you're not the only one.

My one and only 308 WIN rifle is that Savage 99. It was itself, a perverse beast. Try as I might, I could not get it to shoot 150-grain bullets accurately. Somebody had said cheap mil-surp brass would be a good idea. That did not pan out either. What I ended up with was a somewhat downloaded load of H4895 topped off with a 165 grain Hornady Interlock in Federal brass. A full-house load was a bit sharp for my tastes, but loading the rifle to 300 Savage levels made it ideal. This has been my Opening Day go-to rifle ever since. I use it to hunt the Opener and then rotate it with other choices until my buck tag is filled, and then I put away for next year. As such, it has only shot bucks, and it has twice taken camp records. It has also taken several #2 and #3 bucks. I had it out last year and it did not disappoint:



For all my early indoctrination in the cult of 30-06, I have to agree 308 WIN was and is a great choice. I say that as quietly as possible; there are a half-dozen old friends that I don't want rolling in their graves. Will I ever buy another 308 WIN? I'm now 64, and I have a whole side of the rack just for all the 30-06s. My last acquisition was a 7mm-08. 308 WIN may be the road not taken.

I was a 3006 user for a long time, dabbled with a bunch of other cartridges along the way. Some larger, some smaller. Just in the last 2-3 years or so have I really come to realize that for what I need out of a cartridge ; the .308 checks all the boxes. So do a bunch of other cartridges, but I'm a .30 cal kind of guy and couple that with modest recoil and with easy to source reloading components and factory ammo, when it came time to re-barrel; the 308 was a no brainer.

Here's more proof that the .308 really sucks. No fancy bullets, the only bullet this rifle sees is a 150g Hornady Interlock moving along at 2800fps.....some stuff just works. Never saw a reason to spend $$$ on premium bullets.



multiple image

Great pics right there.....

Nice thread with lots of great pictures. It's funny how sane and balanced 308 threads are compared to most other cartridge threads... I suspect it says something about the type of folks that use it

Yep, it works;



So well;



That, sometimes, it knocks the antlers right off !

I could easily hunt the rest of my life with this .308.

SLM- I like that.
Could a guy get some rifle details?

Good stuff, gents.

Who here has put the 165 Gamechangers into (and out of) deer?

The more I hunt with the 308 the less I care about all the other calibers. From coyotes to elk it just works! Was a die hard 168NBT fan but changing to the 155 gr Scenar this year.

The only 308 I have is a ruger American that I won from the local Fire departmemt. It's ok but are fond of the 7mm08 better. The ruger is a good bad weather rifle for me.

I have a couple "Basic" .308 set-ups:

700 Mnt Rifle with a Leupold 1.75x6 short tube.



Sako Forrester carbine also with a Leupold 1.75x6 short tube.



The Mnt Rifle will probably get the nod this year if I still have a tag after archery season.

Teeder- if you ever get a desire to move that 308 mountain rifle down the road........shoot me a PM.

That pretty much sums it up. I got on to the 308 around 1990 and never found another cartridge that "speaks" to me like it does.

The 308 is a workman's round, miserly on powder, rich on results.

One of my better bulls, an older sway-back 7x7 that I shot here in the mountains of SW Montana. 308 Kimber MT / 165 Speer Hotcore:

Never get tired of that one, Brad!
I'd like to find some 165 HC's to try in my .308's.

Win. Classic SS action, PacNor 2’Bish barrel, Bridges Edge fill, PT&G bottom metal.


Agreed, that is a neat old bull.

That picture is what made me decide to go ahead and try a fairly light 308.

Amazing photos!! Wow, it looks like the classic .308 rifle has lots and lots of dedicated fans!

A guy could take it way out to 500 yards, clear shot, nothing in the way, etc... and yet another guy could take it into the heavy brush, thickets, hard timber, up in the mountains, at 50 yards, and it would still do the job.