THE CASE FOR THE .30-06 SPRINGFIELD
Why the old warhorse still carries the freight.
PIET BOS
When editor Johan van Wyk suggested that I submit an article making a case for the .30-06 cartridge, my first reaction was: “A .30-06 case is made from brass.” His response was a curt: “I suggest you do better than that!”
I own many rifles chambered for an array of cartridges. This would not have been the case if I subscribed to a “one-for-all” cartridge philosophy. I’ve owned a Brno ZKK600 De Luxe chambered in .30-06 for 44 years and am very fond of both rifle and cartridge; so herewith my reasons for purchasing it in the first place.
A FIRST .30-06
At the time I pondered the acquisition, there were several candidates available at Groeneveld & Hicks, across Church Street from Strijdom Square in Pretoria: the .308 Winchester, the .30-06 Springfield and a .300 Winchester Magnum. All were Brno ZKK rifles.
As a bush hunter, my natural inclination was to opt for the .308 Winchester. Having used the cartridge before, I was comfortable with it. The slight size advantage the shorter ZKK601 rifle offered me when passing through brush appealed to me, but unless the barrel was also shorter to compare with my 9,5x56mm Mannlicher-Schönauer M1910 carbine with its 20” barrel, this benefit was minuscule. Be that as it may, it was well suited to the areas I hunted in.
I’d been reloading for a mere three years by then, but I already knew enough to know that all bullet weights (read lengths) did not stabilise equally well in a given rifling twist rate. That lesson I learnt when I tried 115-grain Barnes Original bullets in my .243 Winchester. They all keyholed. I was mainly hunting blue wildebeest, zebra and kudu at the time and I was itching for something more modern than my trusted old 9,5mm for which I had to fashion cases from 8x57 Mauser or equally scarce .358 Winchester cases. Remember, those were the heydays of the UN arms embargo against South Africa.
A FLY IN THE OINTMENT: VENISON DAMAGE
My first step was to compare venison damage. We used softpoint bullets, which were not as good as they are today. I’d also learned that the higher the impact velocity, the more the bullets fragmented, resulting in even more venison damage. The ideal impact velocities for minimum venison damage for those bullets hovered around 2 200-2 600 fps, with
2 400 fps an ideal compromise between expansion, penetration, and venison damage. To achieve that from a .308 Winchester, I needed to use bullets weighing more than 200 grains. That was where the pawpaw (not the term we used then) hit the fan. The .308 Winchester was SAAMI- and CIP-specified with a 1:12” (1:305 mm) twist rate and those bullets were longer than the rifle could stabilise. In those days we used the Greenhill formula to calculate twist and it was clear that although the 1:12” twist could stabilise the odd 180-grain bullet, it was hardpressed to stabilise most bullets heavier (read longer) than the average 170-grainer.
I also looked at the .300 Winchester Magnum with its 1:10” twist rate. It could stabilise bullets weighing up to 250 grains, but even with those bullets the muzzle velocity from the 26” barrel was in excess of 2 600 fps. That would cause venison damage – which I’d witnessed several times by then. Obviously, I could download, but why the hell do you buy a Bugatti if you want VW Beetle performance?
THE SOLUTION
The .30-06 offered the solution. Its 1:10” twist barrel would stabilise all bullets up to 220 grains. Impact velocity with all 200grain bullets would be around 2 400 fps from about 75 yards and venison damage would be acceptable. This appealed to me. What appealed to me as well was that I could also use it as a savannah rifle out to 300 yards or so with 180-grain bullets. It would therefore work as a gemsbuck, hartebeest, and black wildebeest rifle.
At the time, somebody raised the point of it having “more killing power” than the .308 Winchester.
I immediately discounted this because even in those days I’d already rejected both Taylor’s Knock-Out Value and simple kinetic energy as killing power theories. I subscribe to the potential to cause haemorrhage in a suitable area as the only factor in an animal’s demise if brain function isn’t stopped immediately. I’ve never been able to see how a 180-grain .308” bullet will kill better when passing side-toside than a 200-grain .308” bullet. They make the same hole, damage the same tissue if they expand similarly, and there is no “transfer of shock” difference because the energy used to create two identical holes is almost identical, if not identical.
Medical tests for almost a century have proven that “shock” is not something that gets transferred through normal body tissue, but that is a discussion for another time.
Anyhow, I had no intention to kill anything more dead than dead, and if killing something deader-than-dead, a bigger calibre was the answer. I was happy to consider the killing power of the .308 Winchester, the .30-06 Springfield and the .300 Winchester Magnum equal for all practical purposes, even if just across different impact distances. Nothing I’ve seen in 44 years has changed my mind on that and I am as keen as I was 44 years ago to be proven wrong.
OTHER CONSIDERATIONS
Whereas the Brno options available to me at the time offered three different action lengths scaled to each of the three cartridge options, that was not the case with Sako and Remington rifles. All other rifles, including the venerable Mauser M98 and the sought-after Winchester M70, were scaled around the 8x57 »
» Mauser and .30-06 Springfield cartridges, which requires a 3.34” (84,4mm) or so-called standardlength magazine box. So, unless I purchased one of these, the .308 Winchester would be short for the action and prone to magazine platform dipping. In most rifle designs based on the so-called standard-length action and magazine, the .30-06 and the .300 Winchester Magnum are better and more reliable feeders than the .308 Winchester.
This left me with a choice between the .30-06 Springfield and the .300 Winchester Magnum. Amongst others, I own a .264 Winchester Magnum, a .300 H&H Magnum, a .375 H&H Magnum and a .400 H&H Magnum, so it’s not that I lack experience with belted cases. One of my .458s is also a Winchester Magnum. I dislike belted cases intensely. They reduce magazine capacity in return for no benefit. The belted cases have shorter reloading lives and the belts are dimensionally sufficiently inconsistent to force most serious handloaders to resize them to headspace on the shoulder rather than the belt. Some, such as the .300 H&H Magnum, have such shallow shoulders that you cannot comfortably use the shoulder to headspace.
There was another reason that leaned me towards the .30-06 Springfield vis-à-vis the .300 Winchester Magnum for hunting purposes. I was aware that ballistically, the .308 Winchester delivers almost 90 % of the performance of the .30-06 Springfield from a more compact cartridge with a shorter powder column that is easier to ignite and tends to combust more uniformly. My requirement was (and is) for hunting, though, and from this perspective my .30-06 Springfield is amply precise. If well loaded and fired, it delivers sub-MOA performance and I’ve never lost an animal when using it. The odd animals I failed to recover during my hunting career was, in any event, a consequence of my fault (human failure) and not that of any rifle or cartridge I used at the time.
Had the .308 Winchester been available with a 1:10”-twist barrel at the time, I may rather have purchased it and it may have approached the versatility of the .30-06 Springfield, but not quite. In fact, I later acquired a custom .308 Winchester with a 1:10” twist and I love it to bits, but I do not use it more often than my old “factory communist” Brno.
Other reasonably comparable options not considered at the time were the .270 Winchester, the 7x64mm Brenneke and its .280 Remington twin. On the larger side, there is the 8x60.
The .270 Winchester is, in my respectful opinion, not directly comparable to the .30-06 Springfield. I found my .270 Winchester M70 with 130-grain bullets an excellent mediumgame, savannah cartridge on species smaller than those the .30-06 Springfield excels at putting down. The .270 also spoils a lot of venison when used across bush ranges. Until very recently, the selection of bullets heavier than 150 grain was limited, but if the new 6.8 Westerner finds market traction, the situation may improve.
EUROPEAN CONTENDERS
For purposes hereof I consider the 7x64 Brenneke and .280 Remington the same cartridge; their ballistics are similar. Again, the range of bullets heavier than 175 grains is limited and mostly tops out at about 195 grains. Ballistically, these two cartridges are almost identical to the .30-06 Springfield, with bullets in the 175- to 200-grain range used in all cartridges. These bullets offer mediumrange applications (2 600 to 2 200 fps impact velocity) from about 50 to 300 yards and there is little to choose between them across these ranges. Even though the two 7mm cartridges are the .30-06’s only real contenders, the .30-06 Springfield can do all that these two cartridges can do, and then offer a wide range of additional options with bullets in the 200- to 250-grain weight range. I am not necessarily a great proponent of massive cartridge versatility as I tend to apply every cartridge to a specific purpose. It is my excuse »
It is a cartridge that has brought me great memories, shared great places and strange campfires with me.
» to the wife for needing multiple rifles, but it offers the .30-06 owner a wider range of options, even for specific applications.
The 8x60mm is not a serious contender against the .30-06 Springfield. Bullet options are limited, and the cartridge is not sufficiently popular outside central Europe to warrant consideration. It also cannot do everything the .30-06 Springfield can do, given the massive range of .308” bullet options.
What this boils down to is that the .30-06 Springfield has dominated the large-medium game class for over a century. In all those years, only the excellent 7x64mm Brenneke has posed any challenge to it but it could never achieve more than merely posing a challenge in the market. I submit that it is because of the inherent excellence of the .30-06 Springfield, because it usurped the crown long before hunting magazines and the internet.
THE MODERN .30-06
If I had to design the .30-06 Springfield today purely as a hunting cartridge for reloading that did not have to feed through machine guns, I might be able to do a better job, given 117 years of technological advances in the cartridge design sector. However, my design will not last longer, be more precise or kill animals or humans deader than what the .30-06 Springfield has been doing all along. I could reduce neck length and body taper. I could increase the shoulder angle – but it will kill no better than it currently does. That explains why the .30-06 Ackley Improved version has not superseded the Springfield.
Yes, I know that many guys derogatorily refer to the dertignul-ses as the dertig-nul-kwes, but we know that kwes isa hunter failure and not a cartridge failure. Every man has the right to make a fool of himself. If they find the .30-06 Springfield lacking, it is because they cannot shoot, alternatively cannot hunt and that reflects on them – not the cartridge.
The .30-06 may have gone into a slight hiatus, but like Mohammed Ali, it has always bounced back. It may not be the technically perfect cartridge, but no cartridge is. It has, however, always been an excellent cartridge and a contender in many spheres even after more than a century of service.
I use my .30-06 Springfield as a large/medium-game bush cartridge. It is a good mediumgame savannah cartridge as well, and I once used it to down a wounded blesbuck at just under 350 yards, my longest shot at a non-desert species ever. When I served in the military, we still used it for a short while in .30 Browning on our armoured cars as a combat cartridge. I have killed steenbok and eland with it, and many species in between. It has never failed me.
It is a cartridge that has brought me great memories, shared great places and strange campfires with me. The sun has shone on us and we have cuddled and shivered through a night in the mud under a cold kisa (drizzle). I love many other cartridges, and, in that regard, I may have been an unfaithful lover to my .30-06 at times, but I will never scorn it. I do not think anybody should unless they want to do so to their own detriment. I cannot imagine life without a .30-06 Springfield in my battery.
Long may it live!