FLEXIBLE rifle round

In my mind, one of the most versatile calibers is the 30-06. It is easily reloaded with bullets ranging from 125 gr. to over 200 gr, lead and jacketed round nose, soft point, poly points, jacket HP and Match grade jacketed. And it's a toss up between the 30-06 and the .308 Winchester. If you're hunting you can load these two up for varmints to bear, and never feel under or over gunned.
 
hillbillydruggist said:
I sold most of my long guns, and I am thinking about getting back into handloading.
I am going to focus on loading just this one caliber, it will be used for rats,coyotes,deer and 2 liter bottles, out to 300 yds.


only restriction is no wildcats, any suggestions?


thanks
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Hard to go wrong with the .308. With deer in the mix, I prefer larger caliber bullets than what is offered in 243. A 260 or 6.5Creedmore are great, better suited to varmints but more than adequate for deer or even hogs. Sorry, 223 not even close. It was never designed to hunt deer. It is even marginal on coyotes IMO.
 
My problem with most of the somewhat-out-of-the-mainstream calibers (such as the various 6.5s) and semi-wildcats is that there may be some difficulty in finding factory loaded ammunition for sale, depending upon where you live. Cartridges such as the .30-'06, .308, and .270 are readily available wherever ammunition is sold anywhere you live in the USA. Not so much of an issue if you are a reloader.
 
223 MARGINAL FOR YOTES?

fredj338 said:
Hard to go wrong with the .308. With deer in the mix, I prefer larger caliber bullets than what is offered in 243. A 260 or 6.5Creedmore are great, better suited to varmints but more than adequate for deer or even hogs. Sorry, 223 not even close. It was never designed to hunt deer. It is even marginal on coyotes IMO.
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All the yotes I killed with a lowly 22 mag & 1 shot never got the message. If you can't kill a yote with a 223 I'd say it's your shooting that's marginal. :rolleyes:
 
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30-06 and 375 H&H are, in my opinion, the two most universal cartridges that you could consider. Lots of comments on 6.5mm Swede, and I agree here as well, with heavy weight bullets it can do incredible things with bigger game. 30-06 can do a lot and works well from light cast lead, high velocity lighter for caliber bullets, medium, all the way up to 220 grain bruisers. Same with 375 H&H, if a bit much for many things, will be accurate and consistent along the entire line of light to heavy jacketed bullets at reduced to full power. After getting a 264 grain hand cast lead bullet to shoot sub MOA out of my rifle with small charges of Red Dot, it can now serve me for varmits at closer ranges, too. Making it pretty universal in the hands of the handloader.
 
I think it depends on your primary use (target shooting, small or larger game hunting), the need for portability and how many rounds you intend to put through it at one sitting. A good compromise is something in the 6 - 7 mm range; large numbers of rounds from a light .30 (or .375) would be fairly punishing unless it is a heavy gun that you probably wouldn't like to carry very far. Good luck in your decision.
 
murphydog said:
I think it depends on your primary use (target shooting, small or larger game hunting), the need for portability and how many rounds you intend to put through it at one sitting. A good compromise is something in the 6 - 7 mm range; large numbers of rounds from a light .30 (or .375) would be fairly punishing unless it is a heavy gun that you probably wouldn't like to carry very far. Good luck in your decision.
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this rifle wont be walking miles in the woods with me, so heavy would be OK, thanks
 
.243 Winchester.

If you limit your deer shots to 200 yards or so, .223 is pretty darned hard to beat for general use.
And brass can be had for free.
I would get the .223 in a bolt gun, though.
P.S. : The old .30-30 is a surprisingly versatile round for the handloader.
110 Sierra hollowpoints and 125 jacketed flat point bullets shoot flat and blow large exit wounds in lots of small to medium-sized critters.
 
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I shot out a couple of 30-06's using the 1 gun mentality. Since then I've switched over to the 308w + added the 223rem. The 308 can handles bullets from 200gr down to 110gr accurately. The 223's are so cheap it's hard not to have a 2nd rifle.

Cheap brass, cheap bullets, tons of excellent designs for cast bullets coupled with quality firearms that are being sold dirt cheap.

There's a lot of mfg's putting out quality firearms cheap, it's nothing to get moa accuracy with these +/- $250 rifles.

Not trying to start a brand war, everyone has their favorite spotted puppy. Simply stating what I put my $$$$ on and what I got for that $$$$.

I went with the savage axis rifles. They were selling them as a package deal for $300 with a $50 mail-in rebate. I sold the scope that came with it for another $50 & ended up with a $218 hb rifle in 223rem. I wanted to test a cheap rifle with my cheap reloads. The reloads consisted of free range brass and free lead from the berm turned into cores and free 22lr cases turned into 223 bullet jackets. I never did anything to that savage other than take it out of the box and clean the oil out of the bbl and check the action screws. Put my own 24x scope on it and took it to the range for a 40+/- shot bbl break-in & cleaned the bbl then shot this test target.
S8ceYpm.jpg

That target is nothing more than a ladder test/5-shot groups using mixed nato free range brass and free home swaged bullets. I've had excellent results with bl-c2 and 25.5gr using 55gr to 62gr bullets in several different rifles. No surprises here either. $218 rifle free mixed range brass/free home swaged bullets ='s sub moa. Never did anything to that rifle, it has a adjustable trigger & I've never even bothered to play with it. That's how a $218 rifle shot right out of the box.
Liked it enough that I bought a savage axis chambered in 308w that has a standard pencil bbl on it. It was another package deal that had the $50 mail in rebate & I sold the scope tha came with it for $50. The end result is another rifle for $218. I didn't bother to keep the targets but it was nothing to work up bl-c2 loads for that 308w with 130gr bullets and 180gr bullets & got both of them to do moa.

I'm currently working on cast loads for that savage axis chambered in 308w looking for a +/- moa +/- 1900fps load with free lead.

For under $500 you could get 2 rifles that will easily do moa. Savage & t/c compass rifles come to mind. 308w & 223rem
 
smoothshooter said:
.243 Winchester.

If you limit your deer shots to 200 yards or so, .223 is pretty darned hard to beat for general use.
And brass can be had for free.
I would get the .223 in a bolt gun, though.
P.S. : The old .30-30 is a surprisingly versatile round for the handloader.
110 Sierra hollowpoints and 125 jacketed flat point bullets shoot flat and blow large exit wounds in lots of small to medium-sized critters.
Click to expand...

what type of bullet would you recommend in .223 for whitetail? thanks
 
Unless you're able/willing to wait for a near perfect shot, I'd hesitate to use .223 on deer. Remember, it's close cousins (.222 & .222 Magnum) were designed to shoot groundhogs and similar vermin.

If you check the Fedingtonchester catalogs, websites and print ads, there are several loads put together for larger game. The Winchester 64 gr Power Point was supposedly designed as a deer bullet. Other companies make ammo aimed at the wild boar hunting crowd that should do-but remember on larger stuff around 160 yards/meters is about the maximum range in the game fields.

That said, you have to be careful about the rifling twist on any .223 that you're planning on using for something like this. You'll want a rifling twist no slower than 1-9 inches and many factory bolt guns use 1-12 which won't stabilize the longer, heavier bullets. I've found the Hornaday 75 gr HPBT (NOT the A-Max) stabilizes in a 1-9 twist barrel and apparently does good work at close range on deer sized targets. See last sentence in paragraph above, then cut it in half for the situations I mention.

The guys touting the 6.5 mm & up are right about all around usage, especially if you hunt the gas/power line rights of way for deer.
 
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