Many of you know, I really like the .30-30 Winchester. It is an iconic cartridge, the very first factory cartridge to be laded with smokeless powder back in 1895. The .30-30 shines with the factory 170 grain round nose bullet. The factory loads are all about the same. A good 170 coming out of the muzzle at about 2200 fps. Very standard, very boring.
Lever guns and the .30-30 seem to have fallen out of favor at the deer camps around the country. It's not a new cartridge, it's not a precision rifle, but it was never meant to be. It was designed as a hunting cartridge, smiting light and handy with enough power to put down medium game at 100 yards. Winchester has built over 7 million Model 94 rifles, many of them in .30-30d. Marlin added several million more in their 336 rifle. There are millions of these guns in safes, closets and racks all over the United States.
They are not precision rifles. But each of them are capable of 3-minute accuracy which is sufficient to put meat on the table. Recently, I upgraded my old Winchester to include a red dot sight.. That sight has a 3MOA dot and the rifle is a 3-minute rifle, so the question becomes the proper sight in distance?
That's where the internet helps. I found an online ballistics calculator and started feeding in data. What I found was pretty interesting.
If I do a good zero at 25 yards, that big 170 will stay i that 3MOA dot all the way out to 150 yards and fall out of the dot at 175 yards. That is well within the yardage that the vast majority of deer are killed around here. This is just math, and field data will tell the tale, but I believe I'll sight in at 25 yards and see what happens.
Somebody will want to talk about Hornady's LeverEvolution bullet. It's great technology, but to my way of thinning, it tries to answer a question that no one ever asked. If you want to shoot pointy bullets (and I love them) go get a .30-06. I have one of each.
Now, if you will excuse me, I have the season's first gumbo on the stove and need to stir it.
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