"Jack O’Connor’s Opinion of the Old .30-30 Winchester" is a reprint of an article written by Jack O'Connor and originally published in the April 1953 issue of Outdoor Life. He talks about popularity of the cartridge and the rifles that shoot it, the history of the .30-30, and why it so quickly supplanted the older black-powder cartridges:
The .30/30 achieved its popularity because the Model 94 carbine for it was light, short, and handy, but even more because the cartridge was, in contrast with the black-powder cartridges which it replaced, flat-shooting, accurate, and deadly. It came out about the time that Western game was getting scarcer and wilder.
Earlier, close shots had been the rule; now they were the exception. The .30/30 was a 200-yd. deer rifle, whereas the cartridges of the .44/40-.45/70-.38/55 class were, at best, about 125 or 150-yd. killers. It is probable that many of the old black-powder cartridges were a good deal more accurate than the .30/30 in that at any range they would shoot smaller groups, but the .30/30 had more practical accuracy because of its flatter trajectory.
It is fashionable these days to say that the .30/30 has less killing power than the large-caliber black-powder rifles it replaced. You couldn’t tell that to the Western hunters who abandoned their .45/70’s, .44/40’s, and .38/55’s for it. My maternal grandfather killed hundreds of mule deer with Winchester Model 76 and 86 rifles and black-powder cartridges. When he was ranching in northern New Mexico it was routine for him to take a wagonload of deer into the market at Trinidad, Colo., to trade for groceries. He shot grizzlies, black bears, bighorn sheep, and mountain lions. When the .30/30 came out he got one and retired his .45/70. If you had told him that the big black-powder cartridge was superior, he’d have figured you were balmy.
And amongst the anecdotes, he has some advice on bullet selection for the deer hunter:
At the risk of being considered a conservative and a mossback, I am going to hazard a wild-eyed guess that probably the best .30/30 deer bullet is the old-fashioned thin-jacketed soft-point with a good deal of lead exposed at the tip. The average American deer (even a mule deer or one of the larger varieties of northern whitetail) is not a large, brawny, or blocky animal. For sudden kills, the problem is not deep penetration but rapid expansion. Particularly on a broadside shot through the rib cage, a deer does not offer much resistance to the bullet. I’ve shot a good many deer in my day, in the brush and in the open, and I’ve had far more trouble with bullets that failed to open up fast enough than with bullets that didn’t penetrate deeply enough.
The ordinary soft-point bullet mushrooms quickly and strikes a hard and damaging blow, whereas some of the newer bullets with harder cores and stiffer, harder jackets don’t do enough damage to smack a buck down in his tracks. I once saw an antelope hit in the hind end with a fancy 170-gr. .30/30 bullet. It went through him from stern to stem and came out his forehead. He was, of course, a dead antelope; but if he’d been shot through the lungs he’d have run a mile.
Used as it should be used, in the brush and in the open up to about 200 yd., the .30/30 is a satisfactory deer cartridge. It won’t lay a deer down with a poorly placed shot, as will the more powerful .348 Winchester or the .300 Savage; but if the hunter breaks a buck’s neck or gets a bullet into its chest cavity, he’ll have himself a piece of meat.
A good reminder of what factors into real-world performance. Probably helps that the gun and ammo was easier to lug around.
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