Long Honeymoon With One Rifle

To my mind, the rifle at the top of these pages is the finest all-round weapon ever developed for hunting North American big game. It is a factory-model .30-06, which, with a few special alterations, has accounted for more kinds of big game on this continent than any other single rifle ever made. With a weapon like this the average sportsman is better equipped than if he had purchased an entire battery of rifles of other calibers (SI, Sept. 16, 1957).

This whole subject of rifles and ballistics, of course, is bound to be controversial, especially at this time of year when hunters all over the country are getting their favorite weapons ready for the season. But I think there is a strong weight of evidence to back up my contention that this is the best rifle that a man could have on this continent. Certainly it has been for me. I have used it for over 30 years, bagging every one of North America's 25 legal species of big game (see box page 116), under all conditions, from the arctic ice pack to the jungles of the tropics. Furthermore, the weapon has proved so dependable that I've never bothered to take along a spare.

From all these expeditions and trophies, I feel that I've learned something about what the .30-06 can do. One of the most important things it has taught me is that there is too much theorizing about calibers and ballistics and too little appreciation of the real nature of big-game shooting and its practical problems.

Big-game shooting differs radically from shooting of any other kind. It offers a special type of pressure; the big moment often arrives without warning, and it may be very brief indeed. At close range, a whitetail deer bursts out of hiding and remains in sight for perhaps five jumps. Then a man needs a familiar, well-balanced rifle with a perfectly fashioned stock that lets his cheek fall naturally onto the comb, his shooting eye in dead alignment with sights which give a clear view in the uncertain light of the forest. In another case a man may go on a sheep hunt that involves thousands of miles of travel, a month or more of his time and an impressive outlay of cash. He passes up one ordinary ram after another. Then comes the day when a near-record ram shows up at 400 yards, walking toward some concealing rocks. On that day, the hunter shouldn't have to worry about how much to allow for the trajectory of an unfamiliar cartridge when his rifle has been zeroed for 200 yards. Finally, you can picture this man following up a big grizzly through the tangled brush of British Columbia, when the bear charges him from a distance of perhaps 50 feet. At such a time the man doesn't want to be carrying one of the less-familiar rifles from his battery—and have to start feeling for the type of safety on another model.

As I see it, the answer is to have one rifle only—a .30-06—and plenty of practice with it. I'll grant that other calibers may be outstanding for special purposes. The .270 is a splendid cartridge for sheep or goats. But the sheep hunter may run across a grizzly or a moose and, personally, I don't believe that the 130-grain bullet of the .270 is the right prescription for animals of that size.

SHOULDER AND WALLET

Now let's have a look at those ballistic marvels, the magnums. A .375 or a .458 is a wonderful stopper in a tight spot for a big bear. Their wallop is terrific—but so is their recoil, as well as the cost of cartridges. While the average man can shoot 50 rounds of .30-06 at the practice range in the prone or sitting position without damaging either his shoulder or his pocket-book, he will take an awful pounding from a string of target shots with a magnum. Consequently, he may well develop a flinch, or limit his practice, or both. So the magnum-armed hunter is likely to face his big bad bear with a rifle with which he is none too familiar. His subconscious fear of the recoil may make him flinch off a hurried shot, or try shooting from the less bone-rattling—and also less accurate—offhand position. Under certain conditions, that could be strictly unhealthy, because even the heaviest magnum will not stop a big animal if the bullet is badly placed.

But even if the man is familiar with his rifle and can place the shot correctly, it is still my belief that the magnum loads are completely unnecessary for anything the North American continent has to offer. My .30-06 accounted for instant one-shot kills on both the Kodiak bear (probably our most formidable animal, which can weigh more than 1,600 pounds) and the Pacific walrus, which is even larger—up to 3,000 pounds. Both of these specimens were exceptionally big. Clearly, a 220-grain .30-06 bullet, if it connects in a vital spot, has ample power for the job.

Now, at the other extreme, let's see how the .30-06 works on our smallest big-game animals. These are the pronghorn antelope and the dainty little Coues deer of our southwestern border country and northwest Mexico. Using the 110-grain bullet with the same rifle, I've had a high percentage of one-shot kills on both of them. Once, in collecting pronghorns for scientific specimens, I scored six clean kills with seven cartridges, and no shot was at less than 200 yards.

It seems clear, therefore, that while other rifles may be as good as the .30-06 for certain specific jobs, none of them can do so many different jobs so well. For the great advantage of the .30-06 over all other calibers is that cartridges with 110-grain, 150-grain, 180-grain and 220-grain bullets of many different designs can be purchased over the counter, so that a suitable load for any North American big-game animal can be selected. It all comes back to the old saying, "Beware the man with one gun: he probably knows how to use it."