Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters 30-06 inherent accuracy

6.5 CM, .308, etc., may be more forgiving, prob shoot a wider variety of loads very well.

But with some work, trial and error, a good ‘06 should shoot with about anything. That’s been my experience. Just gotta find what your ‘06 likes. Your pet load may not be the same load mine likes.

DF

Was your G&H rifle built with an NRA Sporter barreled action or a M1903 National Match barreled action? Both utilized Star Gauged barrels, but the NRA Sporter barrel has a slightly heavier barrel contour than the Service rifle barrel used in the NM rifles.

First I ever heard of special throat configurations in NM or Sporter barrels. I always understood the match ammo to be configured for a perfect fit in the standard Ball Seat throat as used in all gov't .30 barrels. I guess I'll be doing some chamber casts on my Springfield collection, which includes their target rifles and service rifles and an NRA Sporter. You got me wondering now! (I will say that the throats in all of them seem to have the same throat, as my standard go-to accuracy load with 168 Matchkings works universally. I even keep a dummy round in the die box to ease setting of the same OAL when switching back to that bullet. With an array of rifles like these I'm forced to full length size all the "universally applied ammo" and I seat the Matchkings to the same length. Luckily none of them have throat erosion issues that would dictate different seating depths.)

Accuracy is how you define it. Back in 1903 they developed the 30-03 with 220 gr loads and revised that in 1906 with a little shorter case design to be used with a lighter higher bc Spitzer bullet to increase effective range. The same cartridge with national match loads were used at Camp Perry for many years (late 1960's?). I know for sure there are LC 62 & 63 match brass in my stash. 60 years of use at camp Perry? You might say that sort of establishes it as " inherently accurate". I'll bet that box of LC 67 173 GR @2640 FPS 30-06 in my stash will still shoot better than what most people are capable of. If it wasn't accurate enough, it would of been dropped faster than a used condom in the early 50's, for the use of the then new 308 aka 7.62x51. How long did the 308 last before the 5.56x45 pushed it out of the majority use? Technology advances have affected the accuracy capabilites of all cartridges. The 308's I have all shoot well so do the 223's. You can't get it done with the 30-06 no 308 will enable you. Just my 2cts worth...mb

I have a little over a dozen thirty-ought-sixes.

I keep track of all the groups I shoot with my rifles. Generally, the varmint rifles (17 Hornet, through 6mm's) shoot more accurately than the "big game" cartridges. One of my 270's shoots on average better than most of my 30-06's. One of my 280's shoots better than most of my 30-06's. I have a new CZ 308 and a newly put together heavy barrel 700 308. They do not shoot as accurately as any of my Remington bolt action 30-06's. They are almost as accurate as my 03-A3's. The other big game cartridges from 25's through the 375 H&H AI normally do not shoot on average as well as many of my 30-06's due on average.
The 30-06 Mauser may not be all that accurate as it still has the military sights and 'accuracy, me and iron sights' should not be in the same sentence, though the older I get the better I once was.
The M1's I have been more accurate than the M14's or the AR 308 I've shot.
The 30-06 760 I now own is nowhere near accurate - pie plates are somewhat in danger at 100 yards with that rifle. I've owned a 76 and 7600's that were very accurate, however.
The 700's, the 721's, and the 03's and the 03-A3's are all 'accurate', that is they are all sub-minute-of-angle accurate. Though one of my 03-A3's wears Olympic sights, I can get under 1" groups but not commonly with that rifle.
If we are talking under sub-minute-of-angle the 30-06 is about as good as any. If we are talking shooting in the "1's" or "2's", you will not likely find many 30-06's in that crowd.

That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it.

I’d be curious to know from those who have had them how the Serengeti reamer does - as I believe from reading that in large part this was its raison dêtre.

I'll agree with the concept of "inherent accuracy" being mainly an academic debate. If a guy wanted to determine said proficiency he would have to assemble a dizzying array of absolutely identical barrels made for the same action in the same stock, of the same steel and contour, and calibers and chamberings absolutely conforming to SAAMI specs, and thoroughly test them all with another dizzying array of loadings under exactly the same weather/wind conditions off the same bench at the the same time of day, ad nauseum. And what would all that prove? Nothing.

Anecdotally, I've owned a sh*tpile of .30-06's in my life, from early iterations of military rifles (Pre-WWI '03's) through modern commercial sporters, and everything in between. Yeah, I've been a .30-06 slut. Bore dimensions and throats have been all over the map, as well as barrel quality and stock fit. Pretty much what you can say about any other cartridge/chamberings in all the rifles we humans have employed over the last 100+ years. I'll only state what I've observed in my own experience: simply put, the .30-06 is A-ok. The most accurate? Maybe, maybe not. Versatile, especially if one has the good sense to handload for it with an amazing selection of bullets and powders? You damn betcha. More versatile than a bunch of other cartridges? Again, maybe, maybe not.

To debate the "inherent accuracy" (whateverinhell that is) of any one cartridge is akin to the old saints debating about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Especially when across the board accuracy of any given modern rifle cartridge is dependent upon how well it's configured to the codified specs set down for it and compared to how well other cartridges are likewise.

A good and valid point...putting "inherent accuracy" in quotes and questioning the definition. Just for hypothetical discussion, could we go to Joe's Pawn Shop and buy, for instance 10 .30-06 bolt sporters, 10 .308 bolt sporters, a large supply of Federal Gold Medal Match for each, test them under duplicate conditions? Measure the overall aggregate group size? When the data was gathered, could we say one is better than the other...more inherently accurate? I am biased to the .308 to win, although my favorite is still the 06. Perhaps it is time for Mathman to come in and slay my hypothetical inherency test. Or perhaps I should open another Pilsner.

Crack another beer. That's what I'm doing, watching the Bengals and Bills.

What's a Bengal? Or for that matter a Bill? If it's football, as I suspect, I'm ignorant, having patently ignored such stuff for about 40 years now!!

Oh for Pete's sake, I'm fairly sure you know brass balled Jim Corbett killed some maneaters there with a fairly puny cartridge that was not inherently accurate.

Oh, that Bengal?!! Of course! I have a couple Savage .22 HiPowers (and they're pretty accurate)!

Bugger, if you have a heavy barrel 308 on a 700 action and it's not putting up tight clusters there's something amiss.

Ive seen some very accurate shooting with two or three older M700ADLs in 30-06. None of them were mine, but the friends that owned them allowed me to shoot them and I was really impressed with how they performed

That is my opinion as well. I can't say anything bad about 30-06. That was my primary cartridge for most of my life and it served me well, but I do find my 308's a touch more accurate. And I haven't seen nor shot a 6.5CM that wasn't more accurate than anything I've shot.

And lots of guys may not want to admit it, but the reduced recoil is probably a big part of why we shoot those more accurately.

Keep in mind, it took a very short time for the .308 to rise to dominate benchrest, pre 1971....I doubt the 06 was ever competitive anywhere but the 1,000 yd line, and even at that the Hollands .30 Super dominated mostly. But in fairness the .308 was edged out in the early 70's with the 6mm's. It is surprising to me how often the .308 is still a player in FTR.

There's nothing magical about a bunch of super-modern cartridges, that is unless you discount the strictly codified chamber/throat dimensions that cartridges of yore never enjoyed, and the up to date bullet designs/constructions that are tailored to them. Had the '06 enjoyed that kind of pampering by every concern that ever made them and the fodder for them there would be a different take on it today.

Exactly...I often wonder where the lowly .270 would be today if the attention to detail lavished on the wunderkind had been applied to the old .270. When tales are spun over coffee, almost everyone has an anecdote of half minute groups with tailored hunting ammo out of a sporting weight .270 boltgun.

I think that's the key.

Chamber two barrels as carefully as you want, fitted to a "machine rest" breech of some type. One is 30-06 and the other is 6PPC. What happens?

Yes, the National Match Springfields had different chamber/throat dimensions. As mentioned earlier, many of Griffin & Howe's more expensive sporters were built on National Match barreled actions. In fact, the article I published on my rifle--built in 1930, a few months before Ernest Hemingway's G&H sporter--mentioned that Townsend Whelen personally selected the National Match barreled action for Hemingway's rifle. (Whelen had a connection to G&H, of course, because James Howe worked for Whelen for several years.)

I started wondering about the chamber dimensions when I tried both factory ammo and handloads I'd worked up in other .30-06s in my G&H. Here's a quote from my article:

"During this process I found the chamber throat was slightly shorter than my other .30-06s, and wondered if this was standard with National Match rifles. The answer appeared in my copy of William Brophy’s great 1985 book, The Springfield 1903 Rifles, in a quote from a 1921 article in Arms & The Man: “Radical improvements have been made in the “leade” or throating from chamber to bore proper, with the result that the bullet is seated well into the barrel with the normal bolt thrust.”

I also want to thank others who have posted various opinions on this thread, because I'll be writing an article on this very subject for Rifle Loony News--about exactly why the .308 tends to be more accurate than theh .30-06. I checked my loading notes this afternoon, and have handloaded for 16 .308s and 23 .30-06s, which should be a pretty good sample--and have also talked to a bunch of industry people on this subject, which also provided a bunch of information over the years. There are also small but meaningful chamber differences between the two rounds.