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Anyone ever spent much time working with the 338-06?
How easy to resize the 30-06 case neck up and does it need to be new cases unfired or does it matter?
What weight bullet and brand did your rifle prefer?
What die set would you recommend and do you have a favorite powder or loads?
Thanks in advance for any help.

When I finished my bachelor's degree at boise state in 2000 I want to build a hunting rifle to commemorate it. I wanted a tough reliable big game gunshot fed well, held 5 and would work from Africa to Alaska. I was going to build on a nice steyr build 1940 660 mauser 98 action off a rifle I bought in a pawn shop. It's a really nice action that feed its 8x57 rounds very well.

The gunsmith said the steyr 98 was too nice to drill and tap and when I figure out all the other work I thought it'd need I ended up just buying a ruger 77 mk 2 stainless in 30-06 and rebarreled it to 338-06 with a #3 shilen stainless match.

That 338-06 on the ruger shot well and fed well and was stainless which I liked. I tried lots of different bullets and loads before settling on the Hornady 225g interbond over h4350 at about 2725 fps iirc. Hornady at the time had the bc on that bullet listed too low at about .460 and it actually shot more like a bc of about .550 in my testing. After I talked to them they later raised the listed bc to about .515 iirc. That bullet expanded really broadly yet retained most of its weight. It seemed to hit hard but still penetrate. The bc wasn't high by today's standards but it was better than most back then and kept me at expanding speeds further out than a lot of others.

Later I bought a little 20" stainless 77 mk2 in 338 rcm with open sights. I worked up the 225 interbonds in it to 2675 and then found I never carried the 338-06 anymore and sold it to a fire member who really wanted one.

I later went through a thinning the herd phase and decided I didn't need anything between .308 and .375 and sold my 8x68s my 338s and my 358s, 350rem mag and 35 whelen. I figured my 30 cala with 200g partitions or 200g accubonds at the time seemed to kill as well as the mid bores and was tired of stocking so many different bullets. I did end up missing the 338 rcm mainly because I liked the short lighter stainless rifle with open sights as backup. And I've since added another 358 bar.

In retrospect the 338-06 was an easy to work with and smooth functioning round that seemed to like most loads and bullets. I usually just necked down 35 whelen brass and it was an easy 1 pass thing. I had some properly headstamped Weatherby brass in case I wanted to go out of country but I never really used it.

I remember one bullet that shot amazingly well in the 338-06 was the plain old speer 200g hotcor flat base. It was always under 1/2 moa with I believe h4895 at over 2800 fps. I never hunted with it though other than some varmints because the 225 interbonds held their speed significantly better and I had a bunch of them. I shot a lot of game with the 308 cal 165 interbond back then and really liked how that bullet killed stuff so I was confident in that style bullet.

I also loaded some 250g scenars in the 338-06 because I often used those in my 338 lapua back then. They shot pretty well at long ranges just playing around despite the modest mv of about 2550 iirc. I never used them on big game but took a few rock chucks way out there one windy day because the wind was all over and impossible to get a good read on. The 250s left a nice big mark on the rocks so we could see where we needed to adjust. My ar30 in 338 lapua later became a favorite windy day rock chuck gun after seeing what even the 338-06 did to leave a mark on the lava rock.

Bb