Month: March 2020

308 Win OR 30-06 Springfield? By Craig Boddington

Right now, the 6.5 Creedmoor is gathering all the headlines and glory. Fifty years ago, the 7mm Remington Magnum was America’s darling, for some years the world’s most popular cartridge to carry a “magnum” suffix. Both, to me, are anomalies. America is .30-caliber country!

308 blacktail: An excellent blacktail from northern California, taken with a Winchester M88 in .308. The 88 is one of several lever-actions chambered to the .308. Able to fit into short actions, the .308 offers a much larger choice of both rifles and actions than the .30-06.

It started in 1892 with the .30-40 Krag, and continued in 1895 with the .30-30, now 125 years old and still selling well. Introduced in 1906, the powerful .30-06 became the American standard. Introduced in 1963, the .300 Winchester Magnum was at first reviled: Too short in the neck, caught up in Winchester’s catastrophic pre-’64/post-’64 shift, and designed to replace the revered .300 H&H. The .300 Winchester Magnum did not take off well. However, the sun, moon, and stars realigned. Over time the .300 Winchester Magnum, a proper American .30-caliber, booted the 7mm Remington Magnum as the most popular magnum cartridge.

308 Dad M70: My Dad, Bud Boddington, took most of his game with this Winchester M70 .308. Dating to the 1950s, it has been shot little since Dad passed 20 years ago—but it still groups extremely well…like most .308s.
308 Dad M70: My Dad, Bud Boddington, took most of his game with this Winchester M70 .308. Dating to the 1950s, it has been shot little since Dad passed 20 years ago—but it still groups extremely well…like most .308s.

It remains to be seen if the 6.5mm Creedmoor will retain its current popularity, but I believe order will return to the universe and we will again become a .30-caliber nation, as we have been since the dawn of smokeless powder. However this plays out, two great and versatile .30-caliber cartridges will remain among our most popular choices. They are, of course, the .308 Winchester (aka 7.62×51 NATO) and the .30-06 Springfield (aka .30 U.S. Government, Model of 1906).

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IN PRAISE OF PUMP GUNS! By Craig Boddington

Most upland and waterfowl seasons are over. Spring turkey season is coming up fast, so for many of us this is time to shop for a new turkey gun. Fine, but shotgunning is really about familiarity and fit (probably in that order). Turkey hunting is a bit different than most shotgunning because the birds are (more or less) stationary and you aim, but any time you invest in a new shotgun, it’s wise to also expend time and a bunch of shells in practice. Although they taste terrible, there are no bag limits on clay targets. Clays vary widely in speed, angle, and difficulty, but it really doesn’t matter if you shoot trap, skeet, sporting clays, or hand-thrown targets: Every clay you shoot at (and especially every target you hit!) will make you more effective with that new shotgun.

1979 AZ quail: Warner Glenn and Boddington in 1979 after a great morning on Arizona desert quail. Warner has a very early straight-gripped Model 12; Craig’s is his factory skeet Model 12, made in the 1950s. In ‘79 he’d had the gun for a decade, and it had seen a lot of use.
1979 AZ quail: Warner Glenn and Boddington in 1979 after a great morning on Arizona desert quail. Warner has a very early straight-gripped Model 12; Craig’s is his factory skeet Model 12, made in the 1950s. In ‘79 he’d had the gun for a decade, and it had seen a lot of use.

I am probably best-known as a “rifle guy,” not so much as a shotgunner, and definitely not a turkey hunter. The latter is valid: I hunt turkeys, but I am no turkey expert! Shotgunning in general is a slightly different story. The Kansas I grew up in had few deer and zero turkeys, but we had oceans of bobwhites and lots of pheasants.

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