30-Something

Why Your Search For The Perfect Big Rifle Can Start—and End—with The .30.

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There’s never been a better time to be in the market for a hunting rifle. Today’s guns—thanks, in large part, to advancements in machining and metallurgy—are more accurate and affordable than ever before.

Sub-MOA accuracy, once the “holy grail” of rifle dom, has now become such an achievable goal that many hunters are unhappy when their budget guns don’t shoot under an inch with factory ammo.

Better triggers have helped with accuracy, and new powders have allowed ammo manufacturers and handloaders to wring the most velocity out of all loads. Perhaps most importantly, there are many superb hunting bullets capable of producing consistent results, even at very high velocities.

The challenge is that all the options available today make selecting the right rifle/load/optic combo something of a conundrum.

Begin by looking at the .30 calibers. I’m not discounting the 6.5s, the .270s and the .338s, so if your license plate reads 7MM4LFE, just hear me out. The various .30s—from the milds to the wilds— will cover about 90 percent of all hunting anywhere on the globe. Sure, you can fill your rifle rack with a bunch of different guns in a bunch of different calibers for hunting anything in the world, but if you had just one gun, which one would it be?

Discounting the rarified world of dangerous-game hunting, I know that my do-all cartridge would be some flavor of .30 caliber. But even within this family, there are a lot of great options.

A VERY BRIEF HISTORY OF THE .30S IN THE UNITED STATES

In the 1890s, when the U.S. Army decided to ditch the .45-70 in favor of something lighter, it choose the .30-40 Krag. It worked well in bolt-action rifles and quickly caught on as a hunting cartridge, too. More than a few recordbook whitetails, muleys, elk and moose fell to the .30-40.