The family of factory cartridges based more or less on the .30-06 case is extensive. (L.-r.): .25-06 Rem, .270 Win., .280 Rem., .280 AI, .30-06, .35 Whelen, .370 Sako Mag. (Photo courtesy of Craig Boddington)
February 20, 2025
By Craig Boddington
Most of us reading this magazine know that “.30-06” is short for “Cartridge, Ball, Caliber .30, Model of 1906.” In 1900, the U.S. military began developing a new rimless-cartridge bolt-action rifle—loaded via stripper clip—to replace the side-loading Krag-Jorgensen and its rimmed .30-40. Essentially, we wanted to keep pace with the European powers. There was an experimental .30-01, and in 1903 we adopted the 1903 Springfield and the .30-03 cartridge with a 220-grain roundnose bullet.
The 1903 Springfield served us well for decades, but the .30-03 cartridge was a blunder, largely because of its roundnose bullet. European powers had already shifted to spitzers. The subsequent Model of 1906 round was shorter, with .046 inch removed from the neck. The .30-03 case was 2.54 inches, while the .30-06 case is 2.494 inches. The original 1906 loading was a 150-grain spitzer at 2,700 fps.
Where did those cartridge dimensions come from? Our ’03 Springfield rifle is a Mauser clone, so close to Peter Paul Mauser’s patents that the U.S. government paid Mauser a royalty until World War I. Mauser’s signature 8x57 case, at 2.44 inches, is shorter than the .30-06. Mauser’s base and rim are .470 inch. The .30-06 Springfield has a rim of .473, while the base is a slightly smaller .471. Maybe a bit too close to be random coincidence?
Anyway, the .30-06 was America’s service cartridge for 50 years and became the most popular sporting cartridge to the world’s largest hunting public . Because it’s expensive to create an altogether new cartridge case, the .30-06 case has been necked up and down for a century, yielding a series of useful and mostly popular factory cartridges. Let’s meet the family.
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.25-06 Remington Winchester’s Mike Jordan and Boddington with a Wyoming pronghorn taken with Jordan’s .25-06. Mild in recoil and shooting flat as a string, the .25-06 is a fine choice for wide-open country, and it can do double-duty as a varmint cartridge. (Photo courtesy of Craig Boddington) Early experimenters tried to neck down the .30-06 to 6mm and even .22, but the case is too big, creating grossly overbore capacity. The .25 caliber is about as small as you can go. The .25-06 was developed at Frankford Arsenal during World War I but didn’t get past the experimental stage.
In the 1920s there were several wildcat versions: .25 Niedner, .25 Hi-Power, .25 Whelen and .25-100-3000. In 1915, Savage’s .250-3000 was the first commercial cartridge to break 3,000 fps but could only do it with 87-grain bullets. Using the .30-06 case, the .25-100-3000 could do it with 100-grain bullets.
With 1920s propellants, overbore capacity was a problem. Actual improvements over the .250-3000 Savage and 1934’s .257 Roberts were questionable. Propellants got better, and the .25-06 remained a popular wildcat. Remington finally standardized it in 1969.
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Today, .25-06 is the most popular .25 caliber cartridge. Fast and flat-shooting with mild recoil, it is probably the largest cartridge that makes sense as a crossover varmint/big game round, although its primary use is for deer-size game. I am simply not a .25 caliber guy, but thems as loves .25s defend them to the death. Shooters I respect who are or were .25 caliber fans include RifleShooter editor, Winchester’s great Mike Jordan and late, great gun writers Bob Milek and Gary Sitton.
Tastes in rifles are often regional, based on local hunting conditions. Texas is the great stronghold of the .25-06. It is near perfect in power for their medium-size whitetails and also perfect for their conditions. The huge South Texas brush country is crisscrossed with open lanes, the famous senderos. When a buck steps into a sendero there’s no time to dither. Fast look at antlers, take the shot. This is why the .25-06 is so popular in Texas. I’ve taken only a few deer with a .25-06, just not my thing. But I can say each one dropped in its tracks.
.270 Winchester (Chart provided by the author) As a factory cartridge, 1925’s .270 Win. is the .30-06’s first-born. Except, despite legend, the .270 Win. isn’t exactly based on the .30-06. Instead, Winchester’s engineers went back to the slightly longer .30-03 version. Yes, the .270 Win. case is 2.54 inches, same as the .30-03.
Well, as Ransom Stoddard (played by Jimmy Stewart) says in “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” “When legend interferes with fact, print the legend.” In 1925, Winchester was a lever-action company, and Savage Arms’s 99 Savage was serious competition—especially its super-fast .250-3000 and 1920’s .300 Savage. Winchester clearly wanted to wring all the velocity it could out of the company’s new cartridge, so it used that slightly longer .30-03 case.
It was introduced in the Model 54, Winchester’s first centerfire bolt action. The initial load featured a 130-grain bullet at a sizzling 3,140 fps, which was later downlisted to 3,060, where it remains to this day. Bullet diameter is .277. That was unheard of in 1925—except for a 6.8x57 Mauser cartridge developed for China but never produced. It seems Winchester’s engineers knew about it, though.
We all know the .270 was gun writer Jack O’Connor’s favorite, and that’s still helping sales almost a half-century after his passing. O’Connor legend aside, the .270 Win. was, is and always will be a great hunting cartridge. Winchester wanted a fast cartridge but also an effective, versatile hunting cartridge with less recoil than the mighty .30-06.
I am not as staunch a .270 guy as Professor O’Connor was, but I do love it. If there’s a fly in the .270 ointment, it’s rifling twist. At 1:10 it is perfect for a 130-grain bullet but barely able to stabilize the 150-grain bullet that came later. New “.270s” such as 6.8 Western and .27 Nosler solve these problems with heavier bullets and faster twists, but you can’t use the heavier bullets in an existing .270 Win.
It doesn’t matter to me. The .270 Win. shoots flat enough for me and hits hard enough. I see it as one of our best all-around deer cartridges—it accounted for the big Alberta mule deer pictured in the lead photograph for this article—and ideal for pronghorns, adequate for elk. And, just like Professor O’Connor told us, awesome for mountain game.
.280 Remington With its 2.54-inch case, 1957’s .280 Rem. is also based on the .30-03 case. Or, if you prefer, it’s based on the .270 Win. case necked up to take a .284-inch bullet. Remington moved the shoulder forward .050 inch, ensuring that a .280 cartridge could not chamber in a .270 rifle.
With slightly greater case capacity, the .280 is faster than the .270 Win. with 140- or 150-grain bullets. However, the great strength of the .280 is that it uses the wonderful bullet weight range of the 7mm—from 140 up to 175 grains. I love my .270s, but for larger game the 150-grain .270 cannot compete with 160- to 175-grain 7mm bullets. I have often written that the .280 Rem. is the most versatile cartridge based on the .30-06 case.
No one can love (or use) all cartridges equally. I have had several torrid affairs with the .280 Rem., fragrant memories, but I haven’t used it all that much. Its real fans are loyal and have included some of our most astute riflemen. It was gun writer Jim Carmichel’s darling. Until recently, Steve Hornady took almost all his mountain game with a .280. Frequent hunting buddy Terry Moore, long of Leica, swore by his .280. So does current hunting buddy John Stucker. Stucker is a contrarian. He concedes that he chose the .280 “because it was different.”
The .280 Rem. has never been as popular as it deserves—in part due to one marketing blunder after another. Early on, Remington focused on milder loads to ensure smooth functioning in its semiautos. Before the .280, the 7mm-06 was a popular wildcat round. In 1978, to revive .280 sales, the company decided to rename it 7mm-06 Rem. A few months later the brass changed their minds and renamed it 7mm Express Rem. That caused huge confusion with 7mm Rem. Mag. Quietly, it was renamed back to .280 Rem, where it remains.
Only .007 inch separates the .270’s .277 bullet from the .280’s .284. There is no argument to be made there, but the heavier 7mm bullets make the .280 more versatile than the .270 can ever be.
.280 Ackley Improved A .280 Rem. accounted for this desert mule deer. Boddington feels the .280 and the .280 AI—the latter all but a 7mm magnum without the magnum fuss—are two great deer rounds. (Photo courtesy of Craig Boddington) Yes, I wrote that the .280 Rem. was the most versatile cartridge on the .30-06 case. That was true—until the .280 Ackley Improved (AI) became available in factory form. By removing body taper and steepening shoulder angle, Parker Otto Ackley “improved” almost any cartridge you can think of. Not all of his improvements yield significant velocity increases, but his .280 AI does, and it is the only Ackley Improved cartridge that has progressed to a genuine factory cartridge. It was first loaded by Nosler, later by Federal and Hornady.
Ackley’s improvements were not exactly wildcats because his rule was that standard factory ammo could be safely shot in his improved cartridges, which had the added benefit of fire-formed cases ready to reload.
Like its parent .280 Rem., the .280 AI has the full suite of 7mm bullets to work with, in an unbelted case that’s more compact than a belted 7mm magnum. I have a Ruger No. 1 in .280 AI, and so far I have hunted Coues deer and aoudad with it, and I intend to use it more. It is essentially a 7mm Rem. Mag. without all the magnum fuss.
.30-06 Springfield The .30-06 has spawned a long list of solid hunting cartridges. (Photo courtesy of Craig Boddington) The patriarch of the family. In my view, it’s still the king. After multiple magnum crazes and so many cartridges to pick from, the .30-06 is no longer America’s most popular hunting cartridge. I keep saying this, but it’s a foot-stomping point: The .30-06 is the most powerful cartridge ever adopted by a major military. It has a lot of recoil, is not a cartridge for kids and it’s perhaps needlessly powerful for deer-size game. Never mind all that; it works.
With nearly 125 years of ammo and load development, the .30-06 is one of the world’s most versatile cartridges. It’s probably a better elk cartridge than a deer cartridge, but few cartridges are better for the full run of Africa’s non-dangerous species. With the standard 1:10 twist, a .30-06 rifle will stabilize fast 150-grain bullets and the deep-penetrating 220-grain slugs.
It’s an article of faith that the .308 Win.—which is, after all, just a shortened .30-06—is more accurate . I’m not so sure about that. I’ve seen awesome accuracy from the .30-06. In our magnumized world, we think of the .30-06 as slow. Not! Its 180-grain bullet is standard at 2,700 fps, but it’s no trick to handload a 180-grain bullet to 2,800 and more with current powders.
Although I’ve advocated for .33s for elk, I’ve taken more elk with a .30-06 than anything else, including some long shots. Perhaps the longest was in Nevada in 1978, before the advent of rangefinders, on the last day of a tough hunt. I jumped an awesome elk in a canyon, flopped down and figured the distance at 450 yards. I got the worst scope cut of my life, but it looked like a hit, and I found a great bull dead on the far rim. The .30-06 is a force to reckon with.
.35 Whelen The .35 Whelen is a hard-hitting and mild-kicking cartridge that’s an excellent choice for large North American game like this nilgai, an introduced species found in Texas. (Photo courtesy of Craig Boddington) Remington had an excellent track record for legitimizing veteran wildcat cartridges. The .22-250 and .25-06 were runaway winners, and while the .280 was a sales disappointment, the .35 Whelen was a solid success.
The cartridge is named after career soldier and gun writer Col. Townsend Whelen. “Townie” himself wrote that the cartridge was developed in 1922 by James Howe of Griffin & Howe (G&H) and named for him, with his permission. There’s not much huge game in America, so above-.30 caliber sales drop like a thrown rock, but G&H catered to the few traveling sportsmen of the day who had a unique interest in cartridges for bigger game. Still, the cartridge languished as a known wildcat until Remington adopted it in 1988.
Based on the .30-06 case necked up to take a .358-inch bullet, the .35 Whelen propels a 250-grain bullet at around 2,500 fps, a significant edge over its parent .30-06 in both bullet weight and frontal area—but not in effective range .
I probably took the first game animal with Remington’s “new” cartridge, a big Alaskan moose turned upside down by a 250-grain Core-Lokt roundnose. Since then, I’ve used the .35 Whelen for black bears, elk, wild hogs and some deer hunting. It’s a great cartridge.
.370 Sako Magnum American descriptions of the .370 Sako Mag. call it a “lengthened .30-06 case.” The .370 Sako has a 2.598-inch case, a tenth of an inch longer than the .30-06, and the Sako’s .470-inch rim diameter is larger than the .30-06’s .473, so maybe it’s not direct progeny but rather extended family. Bullet diameter is 9.33mm, or .366 inch.
The .370 Sako Mag. was introduced in Finland in 2002 and was soon loaded by Federal. In addition to its longer case, the shoulder is pushed forward, so it has greater case capacity than the old 9.3x62. As a new cartridge, it is also loaded to higher pressure than the 9.3. Combining these two advantages, the .370 Sako runs faster, with Federal’s 286-grain load rated at 2,550 fps for 4,147 ft.-lbs. This makes it the ballistic equal of the .375 H&H.
When it was first introduced, I was part of a group that shot a number of Cape buffaloes and tuskless elephants. I’m convinced the .370 Sako is indistinguishable from the .375 H&H performance-wise—but in a shorter action with more compact ammo and greater magazine capacity. It has not become popular, perhaps because in its limited niche the 9.3x62 is so long established. Also, unlike our European friends, most Americans aren’t familiar with the 9.3mm bullet diameter.
