The .30-30 Winchester

Do you Know what America's favorite deer rifle is? I don't know what it is now, with all the choices available to hunters, but from 1895 to the 1950s and ’60s it was the .30-30 Winchester center fire or .30 WCF as it was first called. Now we just call it the .30-30 Winchester.

In 1835, it was originally manufactured as a lever-action rifle with a tubular magazine under the barrel. It was the first small-bore sporting rifle designed for smokeless powder. Because the cartridges were loaded one in front of the other in the magazine, the bullets were either round nosed or flat nosed to avoid ignition of cartridges in the magazine, which would destroy the rifle and ruin the hunter's day. However, Hornady has recently been manufacturing a 160-grain bullet with its flex tip technology for the .30-30 Winchester that has a spire-point tip, a higher ballistic coefficient and is safe to use in tubular magazines. Hornady calls the new bullets LEVERevolution bullets, and they have the potential of improving standard .30-30 performance in lever-action rifles out to 200 yards.

I usually load my .30-30 with 170-grain flat-nosed bullets at 2,227 feet per second and 1,873 foot-pounds of energy at the muzzle. Round-nosed and flat-nosed bullets create more air resistance, making the lever-action .30-30s decent 200-yard hunting rifles but the 170-grain bullet drops fast and loses momentum and foot pounds of energy past 200 yards. By 300 yards, the bullet has dropped 20 inches, and by 400 yards, it has dropped 58 inches.

Since 1,873 foot-pounds of energy is only about 400 foot-pounds of energy above that recommended for elk or moose hunting, it is recommended that the .30-30 be restricted to 100 yards and no more than 150 yards for the larger ungulates. In Canada, the .30-30 is used on moose and caribou using bolt-action rifles with spire-point bullets, but I personally think one should consider moving up to a .30-06 for game larger than deer or pronghorn.

Still, the .30-30 is a popular hunting rifle because of its good accuracy and light recoil, which is about 11 foot pounds of energy coming back at the hunter at 9.7 foot pounds using a 170-grain bullet.

Since I write a lot about the 700 Remington Magnum, .30-06, .300 Winchester Magnum, 300 Weatherby Magnum etc., I am sometimes asked if I even still own a .30-30 Winchester lever-action rifle? The answer is an emphatic yes. I own the original model 94 Winchester I used when I first started going hunting for deer, and my wife inherited a Model 64 lever-action .30-30 from her father.

I always take the .30-30 Winchester with me when I go deer hunting in case I end up hunting in heavy brush or sspen stands where a light, shorter rifle is preferred and the distance to target is likely to be 100 yards or less — sometimes a lot less.

I also like to lend my .30-30 to a couple of my grandchildren who probably aren't ready to hunt with even a .30-06, which recoils twice as hard as the .30-30.

Whenever I am not hunting but want a rifle with me when going into some mountain property my family has owned for a lot of years, the .30-30 Winchester gets the nod. I have a sling on it and it is light and easy to carry if I am hiking, scouting for game prior to the hunting season or just want the reassurance of a rifle with adequate power out to 200 yards.

The .30-30 Winchester lever action may be older than my Aunt Doris, but it still does what it was designed to do within 200 yards, and it does it well. It definitely has an important place in and out of my rifle vault.

Smokey Merkley was raised in Idaho and has been hunting since he was 10 years old. He can be contacted at mokeydo41245@hotmail.com.

Post Author: By Smokey Merkley

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