The author’s Serengetti .264 is a great shooter and carries well—two important characteristics for any mule deer rifle.

The .30-06 is one of the most effective, efficient and versatile of all hunting cartridges--and therefore one of the most useful. It can be used at considerable range, and in fact I used a .30-06 to make the longest shot I have ever made on a mule deer, in Nevada back in 1978. But the .30-06 is not an ideal long-range cartridge. Or, perhaps better put, there are better long-range cartridges.

I have written that there is no necessity for any belted magnum in deer country. I stand on what I have written. The triumvirate of the .270 Winchester, .280 Remington and .30-06 are collectively ideal for just about any deer hunting in North America. I believe the .30-06 to be the most versatile of the three--but for strictly deer hunting both the .270 and the .280 are superior, because both have plenty of power for any deer that walks, and both shoot flatter than the .30-06.

Mind you, shooting at longer ranges is largely a state of mind. An aerodynamic bullet from a .308 Winchester or a .30-06 carries plenty of energy to cleanly take any deer at any sensible range. And at some point even the fastest magnum .30 requires holdover to make a good hit. So it always comes down to reading the range and knowing your cartridge's trajectory. But why make things more difficult than necessary?

I'm very comfortable with a .30-06 out to 250 yards, maybe 300, maybe a bit more--but after that my confidence level drops quickly. Having said that, though, last year I hunted mule deer in west Texas as part of a TV show where Knight was one of the sponsors. I asked them to send me a KP-1 single-shot in .30-06, loaded with Federal's 165-grain Ballistic Tip load.

When it came time to take a 300-yard shot at a really great buck--on camera, with an unfamiliar rifle--I knew I hadn't chosen the perfect tool. Fortunately I hadn't chosen a totally imperfect tool; the buck dropped like a rock. But if he'd been standing just another 50 yards away, well, I'm pretty sure I'd have passed the shot.

Again, I stand on what I've written. A "magnum"--whatever that is these days--is not essential for any deer hunting. Standard cartridges such as the .270 Winchester and .280 Remington shoot as flat as many of our popular magnums, kick less, make less noise and offer plenty of power.

But many serious mule deer hunters--and plenty of whitetail hunters as well--do choose magnums. At the start of my hunting career the classic mule deer cartridge was the .264 Winchester Magnum, at least partly because of the reputation of the Winchester Model 70 in which it was introduced, and because of the cachet of the long-barreled Westerner version of the Model 70.

I took my first mule deer with a .264, and now I'm using one again. This is partly for nostalgia and partly because, today, I understand the performance of a fast 6.5mm a lot better than I did 40 years ago.

For most of my career, however, the classic mule deer cartridge has been the 7mm Remington Magnum, which is definitely more versatile than the .264. In my (often unpopular) view the 7mm Remington Magnum is not as versatile as the .30-06, nor does it hit as hard. But it does shoot flatter, and it remains a superb open country deer cartridge.

It is the single most popular cartridge that wears a magnum suffix, but in recent years it has slipped somewhat because we now have a whole spate of fast new cartridges (and renewed attention to plenty of older ones as well).