So you want a new Deer Rifle, huh?

[shaman]

It depends on who you talk to.  I had a buddy that went through The Bulge.  His experience was the same as Cut N Run's relative.  However, I remember this talk going on the 24hourcampfire.com a while back;  the experience was split evenly.  Carbines were often times preferred in the jungle in the PTO and in urban fighting in the ETO.

30 Carbine will take a deer, but it's not an ideal round.  I have one friend that hunted with it.  Deer walked up to him at 10 yards.  Bang.  Flop. That was it.  It's a 110 grain bullet and it's traveling around 2000 fps.  At bow/treestand distances, it would be okay.  It's just there is a whole lot better out there. The thing is that, at the muzzle, it's carrying under 1000 ft/lbs of energy.  The rule of thumb is that a round ceases to be an effective hunting round when it falls below 1000 ft/lbs of energy.   Just as a comparison, my rather anemic downloaded 308 WIN deer load falls below the 1000 ft/lbs threshold somewhere after 450 yards.

5.56 is definitely a step up from 30 Carbine, both as a military round and (as 223 REM) a deer killer. .223 Rem now has a small but faithful following among deer hunters.  I've been kicking around the idea of using it for about 10 years, but never actually gone and done it.  When I look at my current deer battery (30-06, 308 WIN, 35 REM, etc.)  it seems silly to be thinking about it.

My one and only 30 Carbine story:  We were all out shooting at our local range.  One of the nice things about our club was that it had a full-auto range.  It was nothing more than a stand-at table, a creek ,and a muddy slope about 20 yards away on the other side.  You put milk jugs in the mud and had fun.  So we were out there with a nice assortment of stuff and one buddy put a  carbine in my hand and had me shoot a clip.  There were 3 of us standing at the table.  We'd just put out some milk jugs. I loaded a magazine and went hot. 

I don't remember any sound.  All I remember was this wall of mud suddenly rising up from the other side of the creek and coming at me.  Lord only knows what somebody had left in that hillside for me to hit.  The wall of mud hit the front of the table, then us, then continued on back another 10 yards and fell on the hood of my buddy's white Eldorado.  Behind where we were standing were perfect silhouettes of us in mud. 

"Dang!" Said my one friend, taking off his mud-covered glasses. "What was in those loads?"

[Cut N Run]

ORIGINAL: mightyfofaad

ORIGINAL: Cut N Run

The next-to-nothingest caliber I ever saw or shot was a .30 carbine. Hold cow is that thing a pea shooter! Hard to imagine that our military could keep straight faces when they issued those things to fighting men and sent them off to fight a war. To me, the .30 carbine is only slightly better than hand to hand combat. My (foolish) brother had one for a time and nothing about the gun or the round impressed me. I would never consider using one as a hunting arm, and would only resort to using it in self defense if nothing else was available. I heard from my father in law that he was issued a .30 Carbine in WWII and only kept it long enough until he could get his hands on a Garand. He said that his 1911 Colt .45 was better in every way to the 30 carbine.

Jim

Wow, if you don't think our guys should be fighting with .30 cal weapons ... how do you feel about them using .22s now? [:-]

I read somewhere that an wounded soldier tied up more support personnel than a dead one. Not meaning to get into battlefield statistics here. Lighter rounds are less expensive to produce and require less powder to move the projectile at reasonable speeds. I'm not a fan of bullets lighter than ~140 grains or .264 diameter for deer-sized targets. Sure, the rounds that do not fall in that category will work, I just prefer .30 caliber 150 grain traveling > 2,600 f.p.s..


Jim

[nhdeerchaser]

I have to say, after all my playing around, growing up, not really knowing what I really want from a deer rifle, I finally have settled on what I feel is my best descision yet.
I traded a buddy of mine my BAR in .30-06 for his 7600 pump .308 and 200.00 cash. I know there are some here that will think I made a foolish move. I don't. I have wanted that .308 ever since I shot her. Couple that with the fact that the .308 will shoot anything accurately, and my BAR was very choosy about her diet, made my descision an easy one.
I love the light weight, the pump action, the classic lines of the 7600. You look at her, and you think immediately of the classic New England deer rifle. This rifle is 20 years old, but does'nt have hardly a scratch on her.
All I know is I'm finally happy with the rifle I'll carry into the deer woods for the rest of my hunting career.

Mike

[smwbwk]

don't yell to loud i shot my first deer with a 22 hornet head shot 50 yrds droped her like a wet sack  but i wouldn't recomend this for a novice i had been shooting this gun for 15 years and know its ins and out very well but i couldn't resist my first hunt with the gun i loved the most since then i use my 48' marlin 336 a-dl in 32 win spl