What I am seeing in the shooting world is that gun manufacturers are hyping up their new, 5000 yard anti-tank, barrel burning round, capable of destroying anything that walks the earth. When one picks up a shooting magazine that round is on the front cover of every shooting magazine in the country!! They will have all the popular sports writers do special articles on them, and.................then they are gone, on to the next new "designer" cartridge!!!!!!!!!! The cartridge that strikes me the most is Nosler's .280 Ackley Improved. Man when that one hit the market it was the last round that a shooter/hunter would ever need or want in their safe!! But....................although the original cartridge has been around since 1957, Nosler had to change the case overall length by .014 thousandths of an inch, reason so they can sell their own brass, components and rifles; it's that simple. Try buying components for this round, compare the costs and even the availability of this cartridge; if you can find them. Oh..........for the .280 Ackely Improved aficionados, I think that the .280 AI is one of the best cartridges on the market. The original .280 Ackley Improved was developed in 1957, and....I think that Nosler should have left that original cartridge alone.
I only wrote all of this to make a point, that "NO" the 30-06 has not died at all, it's just the the manufacturers have taken over the market selling the latest and greatest designer cartridge. I presently have a Remington 700 ADL in 30-06 that I bought new for my father in 1969/70 sitting in the gun safe. I know that whatever I intend to hunt it is more than capable of taking any game that I intend to hunt at ranges that I am capable of shooting. The only modifications that I have made is to glass bed and float the barrel, it will shoot sub MOA with just about anything I shoot in it. Presently I am building a Ruger 77, tang safety rifle, the donor rifle was in .270 Winchester, this one will be in 30-06! The rifle will have a 26 inch Lilja barrel (1-10), the action trued and blueprinted, trigger job, glass bed and float the barrel, pillar bedded. I am building this rifle as a companion rifle for the .270 Ackley Improved that I built a couple of year ago for deer hunting. If something happens to the .270AI, like falling off the tailgate of the truck, gets run over by the truck, I fall out of a shooting house and my big -ss lands on it, there's something that is there that will be capable of shooting accurately and capable of getting the job done, at the distances that I am hunting at. There are a lot of good cartridges out there that have gone by the wayside by the manufacturers marketing hype. But....if one were to do an honest and objective comparison of the "new/designer" cartridges compared to the old and forgotten, and undermarketed cartridges (due to marketing hype) there's really not much difference between them. Cartridges like the 25-06, 6.5-06, .270 Winchester, 7mm RemMag, the 30-06 Springfield and the 338-06, .358 Winchester and the 35 Whelen. Please do some comparisons on your own, take out the reloading manuals and do the comparisons for yourself. Compare the 6.5 Creedmore against the 6.5-06 or the .270 Winchester and see what you find, there's not enough difference in performance to make me want to go out and buy a new rifle chambered it in; and....no offense to the 6.5 Creedmore followers, it's a good cartridge. Take a look at the new 28 Nosler, compare it to the 7mm RemMag, it takes almost at least 50% more powder, brass costs double (if you can find it), the cartridge eats barrels, it'll rattle the fillings out of your back molars when when you pull the trigger, all for a couple of hundred feet per second. The 30-06 has been around since 1906, it has a big following because people know the diversity of the cartridge, and......NO the 30-06 isn't dead by any means! If you have a good deal on a 30-06 then get it; and........always remember that life is not a dress rehearsal, we only going this way once!!!
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