.30-30 Winchester: Still Getting It Done After All These Years

After the shot, the pig was running hard, vanishing into yellow grass at the crest of the ridge. There had been no reaction—other than the kick into a higher gear—but sometimes there isn’t. The shot wasn’t far; my swing and lead felt good. Sometimes you feel sure, but you can be wrong. My companions were less certain. Downright skeptical. We piled back into the Jeep and circled around, intending to quickly check for blood on the clear dirt track on top of the ridge, just past where the pig disappeared.

There was no blood and no fresh tracks, because the pig lay stone dead short of the road, close to where it was last seen. The bullet entrance was where it should have been, low on the right shoulder with an exit on the left side. Yellow grass on the back trail looked like someone had spilled red paint. The cartridge was the venerable .30-30 Winchester, now 128 years old. The bullet was newer: Hornady’s 140-grain MonoFlex, one of few California-legal unleaded .30-30 projectiles.

Back in 1895, the .30-30 was the first sporting cartridge designed for smokeless powder. It quickly became America’s favorite deer cartridge, a position it held for 50 years. It is often said “the .30-30 has accounted for more deer than any other cartridge.” Maybe. Another candidate, because of the timing of its popularity, could be the old .44-40. However, thanks to at least 12 million rifles (all makes and models) produced to date, the .30-30 has accounted for a pile of deer. And black bears and wild hogs and lots of other game.

Close-Quarters Killer

At the dawn of smokeless powder, the .30-30 was considered fast and flat-shooting. By 1925, its ballistics were no longer flashy. Today, with our seemingly insatiable thirst for greater range, too many of us view the .30-30 as anemic and obsolete. It is not a long-range cartridge, but it is no pipsqueak. Gunwriting great Col. Townsend Whelen theorized that we should have 1,000 ft-lbs of energy at the animal to effectively harvest deer. As a rule of thumb, I’ve always liked that. However, if it were absolute, the .44-40 would never have killed a deer; its best loads don’t produce 800 ft-lbs. Today, the .223 Remington is generally considered adequate for deer. In the .223, you can get a heavy 70-grain deer bullet to about 3,000 fps, yielding 1,400 ft-lbs. By 200 yards, you’re below 900.

The deer hunter’s traditional standby .30-30 load features a 150-grain round-nosed bullet at 2,480 fps. Not fast by today’s (or 1925’s) standards, but this load yields 2,049 ft-lbs. For those slow on math, that’s more than a ton of muzzle energy, and more than double Col. Whelen’s proposed minimum for deer. Because of the poor aerodynamics of round-nosed bullets, this load is down to 900 ft-lbs at 200 yards.

Who cares? Even though virtually all .30-30 rifles of recent manufacture can be easily scoped, few of us think of the .30-30 as a 200-yard cartridge. Many whitetail hunters, hog hunters and black bear hunters don’t need that much range; honestly, a lot of us need less than half that. We hunt in places and with techniques that dictate close shots. We want to hit our game hard, get it down quickly and do as little tracking as possible. The .30-30 has plenty of power to accomplish these things, coupled with mild recoil.

A Bullet Revolution

The majority of .30-30 rifles have tubular magazines, traditionally relegating them to blunt-tipped bullets (round or flat-nose), to preclude detonation in the magazine. Aerodynamics are poor. Trajectory is arcing; velocity drops off fast, as does residual energy. Short-range shooters don’t care. For those who do, Hornady solved the problem 15 years ago with their FTX (Flex-Tip eXpanding) and, more recently, the copper-alloy MonoFlex bullet, both using a sharp but compressible polymer tip safe in tubular magazines. Hornady loads both bullets to a mild 2,400 fps in their LeveRevolution and Full Boar ammo lines.

Curious, I ran both loads through Hornady’s Ballistic Calculator. Downrange, bullet shape matters a bunch. At 2,400 fps, the 140-grain MonoFlex I shoot in California holds 1,080 ft-lbs at 200 yards. With greater weight and higher Ballistic Coefficient (BC), the 160-grain FTX does considerably better. At 2,400 fps, it yields 1,306 ft-lbs at 200 yards, almost holding 1,000 ft-lbs to 300 yards. With either load, zero about three inches high at 100 to be dead-on at 200. At 300 yards, drop is about a foot.

With proper zero and trajectory knowledge, the .30-30 can stretch out a bit, but I don’t carry my .30-30s in places where I need to. In fact, despite the spitzer bullet’s ballistic advantage, in the .30-30 I often revert to the old blunt-nosed bullets. In proper .30-30 country I don’t need extra range, and we forget that the old round-nose and flat-point bullets have a close-range advantage. They transfer more energy on impact and initiate expansion more rapidly. Translate: They hit visibly and noticeably harder. Starting in 1895, these were the bullets the .30-30 made its bones with, and until the FTX came along, these were the bullets all .30-30 shooters relied on.

The sharp-pointed FTX and MonoFlex bullets perform great. I’ve taken lots of hogs and some deer with both. However, just as a for-instance, my firm but impossible-to-prove belief is: If I’d hit that California hog with a round-nose 150-grain Interlock (or any other round-nose) in the same place, I wouldn’t have wondered whether I’d hit it. It probably would have run the same 50-60 yards, but I’d have seen a reaction upon impact.

Deer Rx

In my experience, the standard 150-grain (or 140- or 160-grain) loads are ideal deer medicine, and adequate for hogs. However, for larger hogs, and certainly for black bear, don’t overlook the .30-30’s other traditional load, a blunt-nosed 170-grain bullet. It isn’t as fast; standard velocity drops down to 2,200 fps, thus can’t have as much energy (1,827 ft-lbs). Paper ballistics aren’t everything. The heavier bullet penetrates deeper, increasingly important on larger animals. Elsewhere from California, that’s my preference for hogs, just in case I get a chance at an extra-large porker.

As I’ve written before, all but one of our two dozen Kansas deer stands are easily within .30-30 range. So far, I’m the only one who has taken deer there with a .30-30. It worked just fine, and I intend to use the new Ruger-made Marlin .30-30 there this deer season.

My personal interest in the .30-30 stops with whitetails and hogs, always in close-range situations. However, we do the .30-30 a disservice to suggest that its utility stops there. Over bait or with dogs, a handy .30-30 carbine is relied upon by many experienced black bear hunters. Wouldn’t be my choice for elk or moose, but at close range it’s enough gun. Plenty of each are taken every fall with a .30-30. A ton of energy is, well, a ton. In recent years, George Lawrence III used a .30-30 to take all four North American wild sheep. Again, it wouldn’t be my choice, but he made it work. Take your time and get close, and the .30-30 can get it done.

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