30-06 reload question

rocknwell

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Cedar City, UT
I did a search and couldn't find anything. Im wanting to start reloading for my 30-06. As I was looking at .30 cal bullets on cabela's website, I noticed they were all in .308 diameter. Is there a difference between a .308 bullet and a 30-06 bullet, or are all .30 cal bullets the same?
 
Also, does anybody have a really good 30-06 load for a rem 700 that would be a good load to start out with?
 
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Also, does anybody have a really good 30-06 load for a rem 700 that would be a good load to start out with?
Hey, what are you thumping with your '06???
I liked to keep it simple with my '06 when I had one many moons ago. I'd use I 4350 and 165 hornady (or nosler) boat-tails and a magnum primer. Most '06 rifles will like 165's or 180's with 4350.
 
get some (several) reloading books, from different sources, and read them, before you start loading. and until you understand what your doing, don't trust anyone on the 'net.
 
Get a box of Hornady Match (168 Amax). These shoot scary accurate out of my Weatherby Vanguard. It might save you alot of time finding an accurate load.
 
I did a search and couldn't find anything. Im wanting to start reloading for my 30-06. As I was looking at .30 cal bullets on cabela's website, I noticed they were all in .308 diameter. Is there a difference between a .308 bullet and a 30-06 bullet, or are all .30 cal bullets the same?


My main rifle for deer and elk is the 06. I hunt elk every year and here there is a lot of opportunity for shots 300-1000 yards so I started foolin with the heavy bullets and have done a lot of testing with the 190gr Berger and the 200gr Accubond. Took a elk at 489 yards this past season dropped like a rock with the 190gr Berger. I found the best accuracy at 2680 fps and that is good out to 650 yards for elk which is my limit anyway

To be safe you can email Berger and they will reply with the loading data you request. Nosler has a book and you can look up the bullet of choice. Also don't over look using Reloader 17 with the bullets I mentioned. 4350 is a good basic all around powder to start with.

Oh yeah the 06 is a 308 cal.
 
I'll be thumping animals ;) deer primarily..unless I can draw one of those ridiculously hard to get elk tags!
I gathered the animal thing :). I was actually wondering if it was deer or bigger. The 165 is close to perfect in the '06 for deer. You get much heavier and your velocity goes down too much for any flatter trajectory from high bc bullets.
 
yeah after looking at what I could find about BCs and trajectories for the '06, it seems to me that it is a great deer round within 500-600 yards which is perfect for me since I don't have experience shooting that far anyway. So i'm confident that this will help me get into longer range shooting without the temptation to reach out beyond that until i'm skilled enough (and have a flatter shooting round). Only downside is it's a bit more expensive than the .308 cartridge, but...i suppose that depends on the brand. And once I get into reloading, it will be pretty close to the same hopefully.
 
To begin with you don't mention how much other handloading experience you might already have. That said, and certainly not to come off as a know it all, by any means, what material do have on hand reference wise?

The 30-06 is a pretty straight forward proposition with literally tons of load data. To be honest it can actually be a bit overwhelming to a point. As has been mentioned the medium weight bullets will serve you well to the ranges your looking into, and there are plenty of them out there in the 150-168 grain range to choose from.

If your not looking to dump a ton of money into it searching for "THE" bullet, you can do some pre-purchase research to see what most others are using, and also you can sometimes shave a bit of the cost by purchasing in bulk. This doesn't necessarily mean buying 1K of something simply to find out it is going to work or not. Once you decide on a specific weight, you might pick up several brands initially. This will not only get you started off, but also once you find a great shooting load, which shouldn't take long with this particular caliber, you will have the others to practice with until deer season rolls around. There is a LOT of hype nowadays about the "PREMIUM" bullets like the Accubonds and Berger's. While they are both awesome, they really aren't necessary to accomplishing your stated goal.

What I meant above about purchasing in bulk is keeping an eye out for sales, or discounted prices on larger than 50-100 count lots. Keep an eye out for bullets classified as "BLEM", or 2nds which usually or can sometimes be found for around half the cost of a VERY similar/exact name brand product. Sometimes the blems are listed on Midway, Midsouth, and a couple of other shooting supply outfits. These are for the most part perfectly good bullets to use for general hunting and target work. They are sometimes production overruns where they were purchased for a specific manufacturers run on a lot and after they finished up with their particular number of factory produced ammo these were simply left overs. Also sometimes you can find a pretty decent sale on bulk Winchester or Remington bullets, of which either are pretty decent bullets. They don't usually get a lot of fanfare but they have been dropping game reliably for years.

To me the 165'ish weight range has always seemed to be about the most perfect match for general use for this particular caliber. You will find you can get some pretty decent velocities with most powders in the proper range, and usually there is plenty of data available from both the bullet and powder manufacturers. With out going all fan boy on brand names, the overall winner in quickest accuracy, general performance, and cost has been from the Hornady line, and more times than not the standard spitzer flat base. one last thing, if/when you find a particular bullet you are happy with and getting great performance from, I highly suggest that you pick up at least 500 of the same lot# when you restock. I have on more than one occasion found a great load with a particular bullet, only to use up the box, and then find quite a bit of difference in the newer ones. Sometimes the manufacturer will change a minor detail or even the type of jacket material over the course of time, and the new ones may or may not shoot as well or even close to what I started out with, or even worse they drop it from their line completely in order to come out with something else entirely.

Once you have a bullet picked out, stick with the medium to slower powders, the 4895 powders have some good accuracy to them, but you might not get the upper end velocity your looking for. The 4350's have a great reputation with this caliber and might be one of the better places to start off with. On the slower en of things, I probably wouldn't go much slower than RL-22 or H-4831. Those will be the ones which will allow you the best overall velocities and give you the best all around loads. If you can get 1/2" groups at 200yds with a load that is running in the mid 2800fps range or a touch higher, you should be good to go out to the ranges you have specified. Don't get caught up in chasing down the highest velocity you can either, because these type loads are the ones which usually have the biggest tendency to change with outside factors like temp and altitude.

As for primers, no loads I have ever used with this caliber have benefited from using magnum types except one or possibly two special ones I worked up for specific reasons. The standard's will light off all of the powders I have ever used with no issues what so ever. That said, it is a pretty cheap component to try out several brands with to see IF there might be an improvement in your accuracy. I usually start right off with Winchester, but recently I have also thrown in some CCI-BR2 and Fed as well in a few newer loads I have developed. Mentioning primer brands, if your looking for economy loads you might also give a hard look at the Wolf primers. I have gone through a couple thousand of them in the past two or three years for general purpose loads and they have not given me one bit of a problem.

Hope this helps give you somewhat of an idea of at least a couple of things to consider. I got started out loading this caliber when I was just a kid since it was what my pop shot. Some 40 years later, and having tried numerous loads, I for the most part still only use one of maybe 4 powders for all the loads I shoot. As I mentioned above, the 4895's, the 4831's, and a couple of the Reloader powders easily cover about anything you might ever need or want in a load. The trick is narrowing them down to suit your expectations.
 
I often shoot in pretty cold temps., so I'll use a mag. primer earlier than a lot of people. Often with an '06 you don't need a mag. primer unless it is ball powder of some sort, but that's not even a hard and fast rule anymore with ramshot stuff on the market. To start with, use what the reloading book uses or similar; ie. a cci 200 could be subbed with a fed. 210 at start charges.
 
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