This coming year the .30-06 Springfield cartridge will be 120 years old. Here’s a piece I wrote about it in 2006 for Backwoods Home magazine.
This coming year the .30-06 Springfield cartridge will be 120 years old. Here’s a piece I wrote about it in 2006 for Backwoods Home magazine.
A great article, and still true today. Even in the face of the new “super” cartridges (6.5mm Creedmoor, the Federal 7mm with the super-steel case) the .30-06 lives on, reliably bringing down game.
My first rifle was a Savage 110 that came as a package with the stainless barrel and bolt, black synthetic stock and 3-9x variable scope, but it had the standard (back then) Savage “trigger from heck”. I ordered a Timney replacement and took it to a local gunsmith to install. He first tried to measure the trigger pull of the original trigger, but gave up because his gauge only went up to 12 pounds! He installed the Timney and set it for 3-1/2 pounds, and my groups instantly dropped down into the 1 MOA range.
I used to shoot mostly Federal 180-grain Nosler Partition for hunting since they printed to exactly the same point of aim as the much-lower priced Federal round-nose soft point. I could check zero with two 3-round groups, and then use one (1) round each year for hunting. Back then (middle 1980’s) you could find Federal ammo on sale at local gas stations come deer season, and .30-06 was always available (like you noted in the article). It’s one of the reasons I standardized on it.
I just turned over my two M1 Garands, and something on the close order of 3,400 rounds of ball ammo to “Lock, Stock and Barrel Auctions” here in NW Wyoming. The ammo is a mixture of mil-surp with a lot of Korean-made stuff on Garand clips in bandoliers, as well as 1,000 rounds of 150-grain Lake City. The auction is in January and closes in February, if anybody is looking for a couple of “shooter-grade” Garands and ammo.
But I’m keeping my two bolt guns and all of my commercial hunting ammo. The Savage is now battered and beaten; the cap got busted off the bottom of the pistol grip when I slipped on a mountain-side. It still shoots as well as ever, and here in Wyoming I wouldn’t hesitate to take it mule deer hunting, or even elk hunting. But my eyes have gone to heck, and my lungs can’t handle the exertion necessary at higher elevations due to some health issues, so my hunting days may be over. But there’s a range reasonably nearby that goes out to 600 yards, and I can still have fun turning money into noise.
The cartridge may be 119 years old but most certainly (like the 1911 and the .45 ACP) it is NOT obsolete.
Channeling my mother’s and grandmother’s English teacher backgrounds, I believe the word in front of ‘six’ in the cartridge name ought to be ‘aught’ and not ‘ought’
Nice article, Mas – very comprehensive look at an American icon!
Or, we could modernize it to “ot.”
Per ChatCPT:
In the context of the “.30-’06” (or “.30-06 Springfield”), ought is not used. The “ought” in such a case refers to the historical naming conventions of the cartridge, but it’s not the same as using “ought” to mean “zero” in modern language.
Here’s a breakdown of the .30-’06 Springfield:
.30 refers to the caliber of the bullet, which is 0.30 inches in diameter.
’06 refers to the year 1906, when the round was adopted by the U.S. military (1906 being shorthand for 1906, as in the ’06 of “1906”).
So the “ought” in this case is just part of the name and doesn’t mean zero or nothing. It’s part of the historical naming convention for that particular rifle cartridge. It’s different from using “ought” in phrases like “you ought to” (meaning “you should”) or expressions like “ought to zero” (where “ought” suggests a recommendation or necessity).
But no, “ought” wouldn’t mean “zero” in the specific context of the .30-’06 cartridge name
Mr. Domingue:
I must beg to differ. The years of 1901 to 1909 were uniformly referred to as “nineteen-ought-(number)” by the people who lived then. My grandfather who was a WW1 veteran used to say things like, “Well, back in ought-six they brought out that new cartridge…” Another way he’d phrase it was to add the word “and”, as in “It was back in nineteen and ought six that…”
The “ought” clearly refers to the number “zero” in this context. It’s not just the name of the cartridge it’s also the number of the year in which it was adopted. I suppose you could argue that year numbers are names and not really numbers, but that’s rather circular logic.
Heck, my friends and I refer to the years between 2001 and 2009 as “the oughties”, just as the following decade years are “the teens”.
I would submit that the great American linguist Jethro Bodine’s 30-naught-6 would be best in this context….not that it makes one bit of difference in anyone’s understanding of the thought Mas was conveying.
.30-06 is pretty hard to beat all-around. I owned 2 Sako bolt actions in ‘06 with fiberglass-bedded stocks. Using even maximally-handloaded 180-grain Hornady bullets and Leupold scopes the Sakos yielded unbelievably close groups at 100 yards. I had two Remington 760 ‘06 pumps that were completely reliable and predictably accurate. I now have an excellent antique ‘06 Remington autoloader that is my second 742. Grizzly guide Phil Shoemaker supports the caliber even for hunting the big bears. I do remember reading about one fatal grizzly hunt in Montana back in the day, but I would guess that the unfortunate hunter was using military ball rounds that may shoot through and through but typically do not open up. .30-06 M1 Garands are still available, and are prepper’s dream rifles capable of downing enemy helos.
Mas, I took your advice from an article you wrote years ago about the Savage 110 in .30-06
being one of the most accurate production rifles out there. I purchased one of their package
guns back in the 90’s. It was dead on at 100 yards right out of the box. Replaced the wood stock with a Choate drop in synthetic stock and the package scope with a Leupold 3 x 9. It has taken all my deer here in New England.