American Nimrods have been pursuing whitetail and pronghorn with a cartridge fully capable of taking dangerous game with one shot. Yes, that's a confidence builder, but how many people have been turned off by heavy recoil? This massive mbogo was taken by the legendary Sam Fadala. He received permission to use his .30-06 due to a shoulder injury.

So, looking back, what should we have done, and when should we have done it? Ballistically, the best military round in existence in 1903 was the 7x57, but if the .30 minimum ("horse killer") faction was to win, then a rimless, spitzer-loaded .30-40 might have been the ticket. Or we could have adopted the 7.65x53 Belgian/Turkish/Argentine, which is so close to 7.62 NATO that we might have saved ourselves the trouble of procrastinating for 54 years.

On the same note, we could have been ahead of the game and chosen .30 Remington, which was also introduced in 1906, or .300 Savage, which came out in 1920. Incidentally, 7.62 NATO was created by putting a feed-friendly shoulder on a .300 Savage, not by circumcising a .30-06.

Rocky path to mastery
The best rifle I own, and the one that has won the most matches and beer bets, is a stock 1903 that I inherited from my father. At a recent club match, it won with a score of 99-4X using a two-inch bull. It is a fabulous rifle with fantastic ballistic prowess, but it only took me 20 years to master. Now that I'm a fat, middle-aged editor, my shoulder can handle the recoil. When I was a scrawny teenager it was brutal. My father was in high school ROTC prepping for the 1936 National Matches. An old soldier at Presidio Monterrey saw some promise in him but noticed he was flinching. He tied a string around the trigger and had my father work the action, prone rapid, for several hundred rounds while the veteran marksman sat on a campaign chair behind the line, tugging the trigger. That took care of the flinch, and Dad went on to 16 summers at Perry. But with a lighter, but still lethal, chambering there wouldn't have been a flinch in the first place.

Delusions of Marksmanship
There is another problem with .30-06: Its incredibly potent performance on the range is difficult to duplicate under field conditions. Certainly, millions of hunters who mastered the '06 on a KD range tried to use the cartridge's admirable ballistic potential to take ridiculously long and ultimately unethical shots. With .300 Savage or .30 Remington, they would've been less likely to go for that 450- to 600- "Shucks, I'm not certain, but…" yard shot and end up with wounded, wasted game. How much venison has fed worms because men thought they could shoot as well as their .30-06?

Unnecessary Magnums
And finally, as men switch rifles, they almost always go up in power. As .30-06 is really adequate for everything but the largest bears, trading up from '06 has resulted in a large percentage of American sportsmen carrying huge, overbore magnums that would be more suitable for Africa or the last ice age.

The author is a life-long shooter of the .30-06 and admires its versatility and accuracy but firmly contends its power is overrated and its recoil excessive for new shooters. The above group won a military bolt-gun bench match, and the author and rifle have won a number of other club, town and CMP matches. Such bench accuracy is difficult to duplicate in the field and gives an illusion of prowess.

I know a woman who's reliably bagged numerous elk and deer using a mild 6.5 Swede. She knows the scope isn't going to reposition her eyebrow and the recoil will not loosen teeth, and she puts her rounds where they belong at realistic ranges.

Designed with hubris, too straight-walled and needlessly powerful, the harshly recoiling .30-06 has cost this nation of riflemen a lot over the last century. Has it been worth it?

Beyond Ballistics
Napolean is quoted as saying, "The moral is to the physical as three is to one." With that in mind, there is another way of looking at the .30-06.

Confidence is one of the most critical emotions affecting mens' will to fight, especially green troops. In spite of the above listed difficiencies, at no time did an American fighting man have to worry about being outranged by an opponent. He also went into combat fully confident in knowing that if he could hit the enemy, there would be significant damage.

What could we have gone to? Left to right: National pride kept us from simply adopting the far gentler but equally effective 7x57 that had so recently embarrassed both British and American forces; .30 Remington, available from 1906, produced almost identical ballistics as a 7.62x39--arguably the most successful infantry cartridge ever; the abrupt shoulder of the .300 Savage, dating from 1920, was eventually smoothed out to become the .308; perfection was available from 1923 with the elegant and beautifully tapered .276 Pedersen; .308/7.62 NATO--we waited 54 years to adopt a twin brother to the 7.65x53 Mauser, available all along; .30-06--give and shoulders above the competition, but at what cost?

At the same time, the well-practiced sportsman going into the deer woods never had to fear that he didn't bring enough gun. If he could get a hit on target, his trusted .30-06 would put venison on the table.

So was it worth the trade? The emotional advantage over the more pedestrian facts? Were the logistical and mechanical shortcomings outweighed by increased confidence? In the end, was it the best tool for the job or a national mistake?