30/06 or 7 mag

[Drilling Man]

Using a 165 gr. Nosler Partition in the 30-06 and a 160 gr. Partition in the 7MM Remington magnum, both loaded to the same pressures you would have a real hard time proving one outperforms the other either in trajectory or on game performance.   The difference in trajectory is small enough that it would be hard to consider under field conditions out to 400 yards.

  The difference would be, the 7mm 160 would out penetrate the 30 165...

  DM

[rickt300]

It would be pretty close I think.  Not enough difference to matter and this is something that the numbers can't always decide.  Would you rather have a wider wound channel or an inch or so more penetration?

[Drilling Man]

It would be pretty close I think.  Not enough difference to matter and this is something that the numbers can't always decide.  Would you rather have a wider wound channel or an inch or so more penetration?

  From my experience using both, it's more than an inch or two...  Try them both on something "big" and see for yourself.

  DM

[rickt300]

I have tried them both on elk and since I got exits with both rifles the actual data is still unavailable.  In fact the 165 grain Nosler Partition pushed hard from my 30-06 is why I no longer own either a 338 or a 300 Winchester magnum.  It is also why I seldom use my 7MM Remington magnum anymore.

[Wyo. Coyote Hunter]

  No matter how hard you push a 165 out of a 30-06, it can be made to shoot flatter out of a good .300 that is the chief advantage of the larger rifle. It is only and advantage if you are capable of shooting the larger rifle accurately. For most of my elk hunting, I want the flat traj. of the larger or faster caliber. When you compare the 7 to a 30 cal. the 7mm should be a 140. Now my little old 7mm Rem. will kick out a  140 at 3400 fps. my little 7mm wea. about 3500fps. Neither are loaded to the max. I doubt the o6 will match that. It comes down to being faced with a bull of a life time or maybe the only shot of the  season being a long one. Several times I had elk in the freezer, when pals with an 06 only stood and said, "too far for me." Chances with elk are few, and big ones rare, I want to be ready for anything.

[rickt300]

My 24 inch barreled 7MM RM will barely get 3300 fps with a 140 and I like the 3050fps with the 160 better.  If you know where your gun hits out to a reasonable distance which to me 400 yards is as far as I'll shoot at any big game animal.  I know a bunch of people that 200 yards is farther than they should shoot no matter what rifle they are holding.  Add in possible wind conditions, how close the elk is to getting out of sight and even 400 yards can be a pretty long shot.  On an animal as large as an elk a few inches flatter isn't going to make that much difference anyway.

[mannyrock]

Dear Guys,

   Back in 1973, when I was 18 years old, I spent a horrible long hot summer of Hell, working my first job, making minimum wage ($2.00 per hour)  as a construction laborer, digging ditches and clearing brush to make Parks out of swamps.  (Remember the movie Cool Hand Luke?  Well, that's what it was like.) Since these were County Parks, and there were still chain gangs back in those days, I also had the "pleasure" of working right beside the convicts.  Ever been in a ditch for hours at a time, in 95 degree heat , digging ditches with convicts?)

   The reason I worked this job was so that I could buy my very first rifle.  My dad knew nothing about guns, so the only thing I knew was what was printed in the gun rags, such as Guns & Ammo, and of course, being 18 years old, I believed every word! 

  I knew that I just HAD to have a Remington 700BDL, with its "beautiful" impressed checkering, shiney black nose cap, and white plastic spacers.   But, I had to make the agonizing decision between getting a .30-06 and a 7mm mag.  All summer long, I read those magazines.  All summer long, to put my mind in a happy place while digging the ditches, I constantly thought about it, until it really became an agonizing decision.

   My GUT told me to get the .30-06.  Back then, a box of .30-06 was $6.00 (or 3 hours of digging ditches), while a box of 7 Mag was $12.00 (6 hours of digging ditches.)   I knew the .30-06 was tried and true, and I also liked it because it was a military round.

   But, during those years, the Magnum Craze was in absolutely full swing, totally fueled by the gun rags.  Every month, every article, was a story on the absolute necessity of having a belted magnum,  to have that extra range and power over the tired, 67 year old .30-06 that had "had its day. "

  So, though my gut told me to buy a .30-06, my emotions got the better of me, and at the end of the summer I proudly walked into a K-Mart and bought a brand new 700BDL in 7 Mag. (And a very heavy 3x9 Redfield Royal scope!)

   Over the next few years, this proved to be the WORSE thing I could have ever done.  That Mag, with its hard and painfully sharp recoil, plus the costs of the ammo, plus its incredible ear-splitting  sound, made me develop a huge flinch, and I actually hated going to the gun range to sight it in from the bench.  Every time I shot it, I felt like I had just been punched with a left hook in the face by a middle weight wearing boxing gloves.  (And please, do not tell me that it has just a "little more" recoil than the .30-06.  It has ALOT more recoil, and that recoil is not a slow hard push, but is instead a very quick and painful blow).   And worse, whenever I got permission to deer hunt on a farm, and the farmer heard that ear-splitting shot, he always thought I was just 100 yards from his house, instead of 300 yards away.  I was never invited back.

   It took me 2 years to cure my flinch, by switching to a .243, and finally up to a .308 Win.

   BOTTOM LINE:  Yes, at the very upper ends of power and range (the upper 3%), the 7 Mag. may have an advantage in power and range over the .30-06, but this certainly does not outweigh the negatives of the noise, recoil, and expense of shooting a belted magnum cartridge.  The 7 Mag is the WRONG choice for 99 out of 100 people when compared to the .30-06.

Best Regards,

Mannyrock

[Wyo. Coyote Hunter]

  Having used both calibers since the middle 60's I seldom see much difference in recoil or blast between the two calibers given guns that are of normal wt. The old o6 is fine for the ave. shooter as is the 7mm. Neither provide much problem to the experienced rifle man. Now the .243 is a diff. story. Very light recoil and much less blast. It has been said the old 06 was too much rifle for the average man in the military. That could well be true, but the difference in recoil between the two calibers never seemed that much to me or other shooters I have known.  I suppose for a young person to jump right into an either an 06 or 7mm would be quite a shock. I know I was using my old 06 when I was 15 to shoot woodchucks with. It was cheaper and less noisy when I got a .222, but on and off until I was in my late 20's I used the 06 both for game and varmit.

[rickt300]

Mannyrock,  I bought my first big game rifle which also happened to be a Remington 700 BDL but I was heavy reading Jack O'connor and picked myself up a super accurate rifle just like yours but in 270.  It truly was a great rifle.  I didn't dig ditches but I hauled mud for a bricker and this was a pretty tough job too.

[nomosendero]

Well Mannyrock, I had wondered why you had made some statements in the past showing a clear dislike of magnums, at least the post you just made gives some insight on this. It is unfortunate that you did not have some older rifleman in the area that could have started you in the right direction. I don't think a 7mag as a first rifle is a very good choice & for that matter a 270 in many cases would be better than an '06 for
an Eastern or Mid Western hunter who won't be shooting anything bigger than a Deer & not experienced enough to shoot long, which by all of your previous posts was your situation. My first centerfire was a 7x57
& a couple of years later an '06. I believe I was a Junior in College before I bought a 7mmMag. But actually when comparing a 30-06 & a 7mmMag the FELT recoil difference is not much for some good reasons.
In the past the Rem, Ruger & others would have a 24" tube for the mag as opposed to a 22" & the contour can be a wee bit diff on the Rem & with the Ruger for sev. years you could get a larger contour than normal or the same for magnums or 25-06 strange but delightfully so, & I chose the bigger. For years the Rem offered a recoil pad on the BDL, but not on the 30-06, of course now the do for both. So, if you combine the recoil pad & more weight for the 7mm, the recoil diff. was slight, been there, done that with both calibers.

[mannyrock]

Thanks Sendero.

  Yea, my 700 BDL in 7 Mag came with recoil pad alright, but is was a piece of solid black hard rubber, that would bust blood vessels in my shoulder when I shot!  What a piece of junk!

   Back then, we didn't have the current miracle polymers that we have today, and the great recoil pads like the Kick-Eez and the Pachmeyer Decelerator.  Things may have been different for me if we had.

   And, being a newbie, I didn't know that when you bought a brand new rifle, you had to do things like have a decent recoil pad installed on it. For me, I thought I was buying a "top of the line" rifle, that would be perfect from head to toe.

   And, I only weighed 135 pounds, soaking wet.  Where recoil is involved, there is a quantum leap of difference in how it is felt when you only weigh 135, as compared to weighing 175 or more.

   Well, that's all history now.

   Interestingly, I have shot a friend's .30-06, from a sitting position, using a Kick Eez recoil pad, and firing the 180 grain factory HE ammo (with .300 H&H power), and the recoil was very managable.  Don't know that I would want to sit behind it from the bench though.

Best Regards,

Mannyrock

   

[jro45]

I reload everthing. From the 223 to the 458 Lott.

[Wyo. Coyote Hunter]

  manny, It seems physical size has little to do with taking recoil. I used and still use those "hard rubber Rem. pads." on many rifles including a rebarreded 700 in .340, while it doesn't ease recoil like a special pad, neither it nor my rebarreled .375 H & H have ever bruised  my shoulder, let alone broke blood vessels. Not that it didn't happen to you, especially if you were just starting shooting. One of the men most capable of shooting big bore rifles up to 600's was Elmer Keith. He was a very small man in height and weight, but soaked up recoil like a sponge. O"Connor was I believe at least a 6 footer, once wrote something like after shooting my .416 ten times, I had to go home take a tranqualizer and spend the rest of the day in bed. I 'll bet Elmer laughed til he cried over that one. Alot of handling recoil is learning by shooting with a good coach. Learning to handle recoil.  When I was teaching one of the women in my school liked to hunt, but didn't have a rifle. She, her husband and I often went out together. I usually was finished with my hunting by the time they  got ready to go. She probably didn't weigh 115 pounds. Over the years she shot a number  of head of big game with various magnum rifles I carried. Her first deer was with my heavily loaded .300. She got a solid rest with the rifle tight against her shoulder and squeezed the trigger. She dropped the deer in its tracks. I was surprised. But she said she never felt the recoil, over the years I suppose she killed another half dozen head with various mags. I never mentioned recoil to her, just to hold tight and squeeze. She never had a problem.

[Ratltrap]

That's a dilemma alright.  NOT - I have to go with the storied 30-06.  110 to 220 gr. FACTORY loads (that doesn't even count the 55 gr. sabot) and none better for handloading components and specialized loading equipment. Certainly the most common hunting cartridge and possibly the most widely available cartridge in the world, with the possible exceptions of the 7.62x39 and the 22 rimfire. Chambered in every action type out there and comfortable for most people to shoot. A cartridge developed  by the military that remains in use 100+ years after its development and that helped defend the US against some of the greatest threats to date.  A civilian cartridge that was central to the development of many other cartridges, most of which really have nothing on the parent cartridge.
The 7 RM has the edge at real long range, but that really has no interest for me.  As far as I can tell, that edge has nothing to do with the 284 cal. as bigger 30s seem to win way more benchrest matches than big 7s.  Anyway, if I really wanted a long range target cartridge it would have to be a 338 or maybe even a 50.

Certainly in the right hands either the 30-06 or the 7mm Rem Mag. (or Wby. for that matter) can kill almost anything on the planet. However, if I had the money and health to hunt the planet I would probably case a 30-06 on a slick commercial Mauser action and a 416 Rigby double rifle and never feel undergunned.

I have a 7mm Remington Magnum and 2 30-06 Springfields, but the '06 tends to get the nod for hunts more often than not and way more often than the 7 RM. Most times the 7 RM would do the job just fine, but beside the fact you burn half again the powder and carry a heavier gun, but still absorb more recoil, the 30-06 is just more comfortable. Finally, there is the belt.  Something I don't understand either aesthetically or technically. I'm sure there was a reason to believe that the long tapered case neck on H&H cartridges could cause headspace issues given machining tolerances in 1906, but why waste the brass on a cartridge with a 25 degree neck in 1962?

[mannyrock]

  Wyoming Coyote,

   Thanks for your comments regarding the 7 Mag, but did you have that 115 pound girl sit at the bench for two hours and fire a box or two of 7 Mag to sight it in?  Or, did you sight it in for her, and have her fire just one round in the field at the deer?  Let me guess, . . . you sighted it in for her.

   Anyone can fire one or two shots from a standing or sitting position in the field at a game animal, and not really feel or suffer from the recoil, even from a large belted magnum.  Your adrenalin is rushing, and you are gonna go with the flow.  But, that isn't the test.   Being able to comforably sight a rifle in from the bench, firing at least 20 rounds of the top end ammo, and not feeling beaten up by it, is the test.  :-)

  Just my thoughts.
 
  Mannyrock

[rickt300]

I usually don't spend a lot of time shooting my big game rifles from the bench after I have worked up good loads for them.  I check zero with them before I take them hunting.  I do a lot more shooting with my 223 and 243 rifles and the practice is just as good.  Most of my hunting anymore could be done with a 7x57 or 308 but I like variety and I like both my 30-06 and 7MM RM.  Recoil doesn't bother me when shooting at game, in fact I never notice it.

[Wyo. Coyote Hunter]

  manny, I said the rifle was mine and the ammo was heavy for my use. Of course I sighted it in. She used it a number of times. It makes a rifle recoil less when one is excited, the point is she was able to use it effectively. Sitting at a bench blasting 20 rounds to a target does little to improve ones shooting unless he is trying loads, sighting in etc. Shooting a bit as often as possible is the way to improve ones accuracy. Also, when using a bench, things like ear protection, shooting coats, etc. make the job of bench shooting heavy guns easier. You had a bad go with a rifle. For what ever reason. I am merely trying to explain, shooting from a bench with a heavy rifle is a skill that must be learned. Praticed. All shooting must be praticed. You switched to a lighter rifle to solve your problems, that is fine if you are happy and successful. But it does not make the rifle you passed by junk because of the recoil. It seems from visiting with folks, that certain rifles for what ever reason, give more recoil than others of the same caliber and make. I haven't seen it, but different folks I know have mentioned it.

[mannyrock]

Wyoming.

   Sorry, I wasn't clear.  I didn't mean that the Rem 700CDL was junk.  (As a matter of fact, it was very accurate right out of the box.)  I just meant that the solid black hard-rubber recoil pad was junk. :-)

Regards,

Mannyrock

[Tiapan64]

I have both 30.06 in a model 03A3 that was brought back from WW2 by my father and sporterized, LOVE that gun, topped with a Bushnell Sportview 3X9 rangefinder with paralex correction, you can drive tacks at 200 yrds, have set at the range and burned 200 rounds....no problem.  I also have a Savage 110E with no recoil pad and a 4X12 Rangefinding Scope on it.  I sat down with it last weekend and burned thru 120 rounds of 162 grain sp 61.0 grains of IMR 4831 @ 3050 FPS...it was fine...no bruising or flinching....recoil doesn't bother me and between the 2, the 7MM Mag kicks harder....lighter gun with NO recoil pad.  Shot at 200 yrds benchrested 1 1/2" CTC.  I love them both but the 30.06 will always hold a special place in my heart.....I was trained to shoot it by my father and to this day love the grand ole 30.06, only reason I got the 7 Mag is so I could carry it on hunts and put the 03A3 up as a gun dealer here offered me 3000 for it but it is still mine, coz my dad gave it to me. rest his soul.  OH, and I am 6'3" 240 pounds.  But I also reload my own 500 Mags and I love that handcannon.  370 grn hardcast over 44.2 grns of lilgun....that'll get your attention........I shoot it ALOT.. burned thru 200 rounds last time I took it out.