Is 30-06 Really as Versatile as They Claim?

ah the myth of the 30ot6 the world's most versatile cartridge they say this thing is good for everything from varmints to the most dangerous game but is that true let's find out on this episode of ron's foamer outdoors [Music] so don't touch that dial and don't walk away just because we're talking about this old war horse the 30 odd six we really need to look into this cartridge because and this thing's been around for 115 years or so can it possibly perform in the 21st century well according to some of the data that i've looked up probably can and yes it can actually run pretty close to some of our most popular varmint cartridges a 30 caliber varmint round this sounds crazy before we go into the numbers let's talk a little bit about where this 30x6 came from and why it's called the 30 odd sex most of us know it's because it came out in 1906. the weird thing is a lot of younger folks wonder what the word ot means in that 30 odd six what's that hot thing guy the other day asked me what odd meant in it it's not odd well it sounds odd it's ought ought it's an old term for zero so in the 1900s the zero years were known as the ought years 1903 and 4 and 6 and such so that's why it's called the 30 odd 6. now today a lot of folks refer to it as the 3006 but that is actually wrong because an o is a letter it's an alpha character it's not a number so it's not 19 1906. it's really 0 6. so the ought makes more sense but it's an old-fashioned term anyway that's why we call it the theriot sex where did it come from well first step down it came from the 1903 or the 1903 cartridge which was a military cartridge but that came from something the germans started way back in 1888 they came out with a cartridge one of the first smokeless cartridges was the uh eight millimeter mauser and they used that in world war one and i think even in the world war ii they were shooting it but the spaniards took a different version of it peter paul mauser who invented that mauser action rifle and these cartridges he came up with a step down eight millimeter that was called the seven millimeter mauser and that's really where it all started so this was used by the spanish soldiers in cuba during the spanish-american war and that's where we first met it to our regret teddy roosevelt and the rough riders remember them they ran up san juan hill and captured kettle hill and all that stuff they were up against the 757s and they were mowing them down because the spanish soldiers were up on the heights shooting down on us so that was an advantage for them already but the bigger advantage was 150 grain bullet they had smoking out of that thing they were just laying down some flat fire and we couldn't keep up we were shooting the 30-40 craig with a 220 grain bullet didn't have the reach 45 70s that didn't have the reach so when we got back from that war teddy roosevelt and the military brass got to work on a new cartridge for us and what came out of it was the 1903 cartridge which shot a 220 grain round nose bullet didn't take them long to figure out that that was not fast enough they needed to go to a faster bullet so they tried 150 grain spire point and it worked well so they cut back the length of the neck just a little bit i believe and they named it the third of the 30 of 06 or oth 6 30 at 6. so that's where it came from but it is so close to the 757 and the 8 millimeter mausers that mouser was able to sue us for patent infringement and he got some royalties i think it amounted to about two hundred thousand dollars for both the springfield 03 bold action rifle that we made which looks a lot like a mouser uses that same claw extractor and said we had to pay for that too but at any rate it might have cost us something but we had a new rifle that was really something teddy roosevelt had one customized i think by griffin and howe and he took that sporterized 03 military rifle over to africa to hunt with and just had some wonderful luck with it shot very well with that well as well as he could shoot he was pretty myopic he didn't have the best eyes in the world so he didn't didn't shoot all that well but boy the 30 odd 6 really impressed him and then down the road several other famous people took it over there one was ernest hemingway in the 30s and he famously shot a running rhinoceros at 300 yards and had a one shot kill with the 30 odd sex so it got quite a reputation and it was used on just about anything and everything around the world for a lot of years but what we want to figure out is if it's viable this era and that we're in the 21st century and this thing is practically a product of the 19th century so we're going back quite a ways with modern powders and modern bullets the 30 odd six is really better than it ever was before instead of shooting a 150 grain bullet at the 2700 feet per second it used to shoot it's now up to 3 000 feet per second i've got some pretty impressive numbers on some bullets here we're going to check those out and compare the 30 outsix to its competitors which step all the way down to the 223 if you can believe that here's a popular varmint cartridge how can a 30 odd six compare to a 223 for varmint hunting and then at the other end is the extreme big cartridges like a 375 h well good grief you're not going to get the 30 odd 6 to perform like that yet it has taken the same animals that the 375 has so it's argued as a viable moose and big bear and big african antelope and a dangerous game rifles it's been used quite successfully on cape buffalo so how do we do it well we do it with a lot of bullet selection and that's one of the things that everybody brags about with the thirty odd six it can shoot anywhere from a hundred grain plinker bullet all the way up to a 220 grain round nose bullet now i don't have a 220 here i've got a 210 but i'll give you an idea of the length we're getting to now the 30 odd six is generally put into a one and ten inch twist barrel and that will stabilize these bullets all the way up to 220 in some cases but it has to be a round nose if you make it a long pointed bullet like these burgers it's too long to stabilize it's the length of the bullet that makes it unstable and too slow of a twist not the weight the length but most 30 odd sixes will handle up to a 220 grain so what is the advantage of that we're gonna see that here in a little bit on this paper so let's compare the 30 odd six and that little two two three obviously the two two three is a great varmint round it's good for coyotes can the 30 out six with 110 grain bullet and let's go with a fairly efficient one right here that i think is the sierra you know that's 125. it's a burger 110 grain bullet pretty sleek obviously it's a stumpy little thing but we can drive it pretty fast with all the powder in that 30.6 so i'm going to flash up on the screen some numbers here you look at that the load is a 30.6 with 110 grain varmageddon bullet from nosler i zero that at 217 yards to keep the peak trajectory no higher than one and a half inches above the line of sight okay the bc is pretty high on that bullet 0.293 the muzzle velocity is really significant 3450 feet per second and that was measured out of a 24 inch barrel by nosler took all these numbers from their nozzler 9 manual so look at the 300 yard performance compared to that 223 with a 55 grain ballistic tip bullet that's a pretty popular and common garment bullet but it drops an inch more than 30 on six it deflects inch and a half more in the wind that's a 10 mile an hour right angle wind and it has a lot less energy the 30 odd six is a better varmint round than the 223 of course you're going to have a lot more powder it's going to be more expensive and you're going to have a little bit more recoil but it really surprised me to see how well that little stumpy 110 grain bullet can do pretty impressive stuff now most of us aren't going to buy a 30 out of 6 to hunt varmints with but 150 grain bullet makes it an awfully effective pronghorn sheep whitetail mule deer cartridge right that's what it's mostly used for let's just check out 150 grain e-tip that is an all-copper bullet from nosler we're going to drive that thing at 3050 feet per second which is top end speed but it was in their loading manual and we're going to compare it to the 6.5 creedmoor now everybody knows that's a long range beauty right minimum wind deflection uh look at the numbers on this i'm using 142 grain accubond long-range bullet and that's got a high bc we're driving it to what i consider a top velocity 2730 i don't often get much more than that that's what the nosler manual recommended as a top load i know a lot of people will push them harder than that but i'm not going there at any rate with those numbers look at the drops at 300 yards 30.6 does not drop as much as the 6.5 creedmoor it's got an inch advantage pretty cool now the wind advantage does go to the creedmoor that's because of that high bc a 0.625 bc on that 264 bullet off the 6'5 that's pretty significant compared to a 0.350 with a 30 odd six so there is definitely an advantage to the creedmoor but the energy advantage goes to the 30 odd six 1732 foot pounds of energy versus 1686 now downrange that's going to change because of the efficiency of that narrower bullet that will retain better energy at 500 600 yards but most of us aren't hunting at those distances anyway now let's go up to the big stuff the 30 odd six has a pretty good capacity of powder it'll take oh generally 57 to 63 grains of powder depending on the kite the type of powder and the bullet you're pushing so you're going to be able to drive a fairly heavy bullet at some pretty decent velocities and i think 190 grain bullet in the 30 odd six is about as far as i want to go and still do some decent long range shooting with it so let's grab 190 green accubon long range with a high bc of 0.597 and the muzzle velocity we can reportedly get it up to 2720 that's pretty darn fast for 190 grain bullet let's compare it to the 7ram mag because that is one of the cartridges that is said to have helped push the 30x6 to the background and obviously that 7 rem mag has got more powder i mean look at the size of that it's got a fatter case and it's the same length and it has a sharper shoulder so you've got a lot more powder capacity with that one and you have a narrower bullet so you're going to have a higher ballistic score efficient it should be more efficient all the way around sure enough the 7 beats the 30 odd sex you look at that 300 yard performance and it's dropping two inches less than the 30 odd six you've got a half inch advantage in the wind deflection department got a little more energy on it just all the way around but what impresses me about the 30 odd six compared to the seven rim mag is just how close it does come with a lot less powder so i think one could make a pretty good argument for that 30 out six hanging right in there out to 300 yards and again not many of us like to shoot farther than 300 yards at game anyway i certainly try not to shoot any farther than that getting closer is always the best option it just reduces all the variables that are going to mess up a shot so if you're not the kind of person who's looking to do this 4 500 yard and farther shooting when you're hunting you really might not need a magnum a 30 odd six might be enough for you and remember you're going to have less recoil because you've got less powder so all those things are worth considering now let's go to the top end when someone says the 30.6 is a viable dangerous game cartridge is that legit well let's work with a 220 grain partition bullet now that doesn't have the highest bc in the world 0.351 i'm not worried about bc on dangerous game because we're going to get close this is the bullet we want for the punch and the depth and the drive we want a lot of weight back in the shank so that bullet can really have some momentum and continue to drive deep so look at the numbers you're going to drop 8.6 inches at 300 yards once again who cares i'm not shooting that far with this big bullet got 10 inches of deflection nah not horrible 1771 foot pounds of energy that doesn't sound like a lot of energy but again that's 300 yards let's look down at that final number at a hundred yards you've got a plus three because of my trajectory i'd zero that thing at 220 yards so i'm going to be three inches high at 100. i wouldn't do that with a dangerous game setup either but that doesn't matter for the energy that's what we want to consider here look at that 2708 foot-pounds of energy that's retaining a goodly amount of energy and when you put that behind a 220 grain bullet you've got momentum and that's what continues to drive that bullet deep so you get a good controlled expansion bullet and drive it at that velocity and do your dangerous game hunting or your big bears or even moose inside of 200 yards you're going to get some pretty impressive performance so if you're you don't like the idea of a big long full-length magnum action like the 375 h and you don't want the recoil of a 250 grain bullet out of a 338 wind mag or even a 200 grain bullet out of the 300 win mag consider that 30 odd sex because i don't think the moose or the bear is going to know the difference so the 30 odd 6 has been known now as the standard length we are often called the long action but really the magnums are the long action that would be your 375 h class cartridge and you can see how much longer they are than the 30 odd six so the 30 odd six has become kind of our standard length action this is the magnum length action and then the 308 class of cartridges are known as the short actions so a lot of people will prefer a short action rifle a little handier a little quicker i don't worry too much about that uh but you will get a little less recoil because you've got less powder in a 308 but the 30 odd sticks gives you that advantage of more powder for those higher end bullets the heavier bullets so i think that's what makes it more versatile than the 308 and you can get pretty much any rifle in a 30x6 i mean if someone manufactures rifles they chamber for the 30 odd six except for a lot of obviously the 223 length ar platform you're not going to have it but bolt actions and pumps and some lever actions and lots of auto loaders and single shots like the ruger number one beautiful rifle to having the 386 you're just going to find a rifle out there the style that you like the action that you like and at a price point you like you know some of these 400 even 300 rifles these days are are coming in shooting minute of angle and you get it on 30 odd six you're ready to hunt anything so there's just incredible versatility now if you're concerned about recoil a couple of ways to handle that one is of course to have a heavier rifle the other is to use a lighter weight bullet but the other one i think is to train the 30 out 6 was used by the military for one reason because the average soldier could handle it without flinching and shoot a lot so it tells you that you should be able to handle that recoil with a little bit of training and one of the ways i do that is to use good ear protection because that really makes a difference when you don't hear that big roar always use great ear protection and then put on a pad of some kind a past recoil pad or something and work your way up and don't lie prone on the ground to shoot that always emphasizes recoil stand up as you're training and rock back with a little bit of recoil and you pretty soon get to appreciate that it really doesn't kick all that much and if you're having trouble flinching have your buddy load the rifle behind your back only don't really load it you're not gonna know if it's got a live round in it or not and if you flinch you're gonna feel it and see it and it's gonna look ridiculous and after you've shot click click click a bunch of times in dry fire without flinching pretty soon you relax and you start concentrating on the target you shoot properly and then you put a live round in and it goes off and you hit your target you go that didn't hurt i can tell you that's the way it works because i did it and my wife has done it she's learned to shoot very well by that trick so you might want to try that but i just can't argue against that 30.6 it's just so versatile it's been around for so long and with modern bullets and modern powders it's better than ever if you're looking for a great all-around do everything cartridge the old myth about the 30 odd 6 is not a myth that thing is the real deal so more power to you if you're shooting at 30 odd six if you haven't tried one yet i'd urge you to give it a try because this is one that was what the mountain man used to say ride the river with 30 odd six hey i'm ron spohmer thanks for watching i invite you to subscribe to our channel and thanks to our patreon members our patrons help fund the production of these videos and we certainly appreciate that you can join us on patreon as well we'd like that and in the meantime i invite everybody to hunt honest and shoot straight [Music] you

Channel: Ron Spomer Outdoors

Views: 471,281

Rating: 4.9472332 out of 5

Keywords: outdoors, ron spomer outdoors, ron spomer, hunting, firearms, guns, shooting sports, rifles, big game hunting, hunting gear, hunting gear review, rifle review, gun review, 30-06, 30-06 ballistics, 30-06 ballistics 150 grain vs 180 grain, 30-06 ballistics 300 yard zero, 30-06 versatility

Id: DCbk-0XwweQ

Length: 19min 7sec (1147 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 23 2021