Re: Best budget beat through the woods rifle
I know a lot of things have been killed by the .30-30 over the years, I even killed my first deer with one. That said, You could not give me one if I had to use factory ammo for it. This last season, my cousin and I went out to his stand for the afternoon, he wound up shooting a doe at about forty yds. standing broadside to us.
It was getting dark, he tried for the neck shot, and hit her high in the side just aft of the neck. Bullet penetrated 3-4 inches of back loin(damn!), hit the spine, then made a 90-degree turn and traveled right down the exact center of the loin on the same side as entry(double damn!). It shed the jacket at the spine, and the rest of it lodged in the entry side rear quarter. End result: One doe that had to be put down with a secind shot to the head, and 1 loin and a good portion of one rear quarter ruined. Not to mention two pissed-off hunters. I should have loaned him My Guide Gun instead. I could not believe the erratic behavior of that round. What a joke. I get chuckled at for using .45-70 on deer, but they drop in their tracks and you can eat right up to the hole with the Remington 405gr. Trapdoor load I use. For ranges over two hundred yards, I switch to my .308. Nothing flashy, but the combo works for anything in the lower 48 under any conditions I am likely to hunt in.
For a walking around gun, I use the Guide Gun for brush and woods, and the .308 boltgun for beanfields, desert, or mountain hunting. The .308 is a Remington Mountain Guide SS .308 with a 2.5-8x36 Leupold. Weighs less than seven pounds ready to go, and will put the first two rounds sub-moa, with the third opening things up to just over MOA. Never seem to need more than one shot anyway, two at the most, so the lightweight is the way to go. A good boltgun in .308 is plenty for anything short of a charging grizzly, and I guess if that's what I had when my day went to hell that bad, we'd find out how good a 165gr. TSX worked on grizzly. If I could only have one rifle, it would be a .308 in a bolt action sporter configuration. It seems to be the most utilitarian rifle/cartridge combo I've found. YMMV.