Hunting with 30-30 at 500 yards?

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The penetration measurement in "boards" is something I haven't seen a whole lot. Pretty neat. At 500 yards, the 30-30 would be falling very quickly. Hitting an animal let alone hitting the vitals would be impressive at that range, 25 yards difference would mean several inches vertical shift in poi.
 
^^This^^

The .30-30 is a 200 yard gun, 300 if the shooter is accomplished and has memorized drop tables. Given the bullet design and velocity of the typical .30-30, physics is your enemy past that. Poking a hole is one thing, a clean kill is another.
 
Those muzzle velocities are about 150-200 fps optimistic from common 20" barrels and todays loads. Maybe they were actually that fast back then from 24" barrels.
 
The 30-30 will do the job at 500 yards under ideal circumstances with the right shooter pulling the trigger. Look at the popular buffalo guns that pre-dated the 30-30 by 50 years. The 30-30 shoots like a laser beam by comparison.
 
Looked it up.

A 170gr RN started at 2100 fps and sighted in at 100 yards has a drop of 150 inches at 500 yards. 125" low with a 200 yard sight-in.

"Windage and elevation," to quote John Wayne.
 
Theres a couple things that make this viable back in the day. Hunters hunted to eat and had far more experiences shooting game. They were use to long shots and using vernier sights. Plus game was plentiful and much less wary so you could get multiple shots. Just look at some of the guys who shoot .22 LR at 3,4,500+ yards and get consistent hits. Is 500 yds pushing it. Sure. But compared to some of the other black powder pistol and rifle rounds in those early lever actions the 30-30 was hot.
 
My Win. .30-30 has a 24" barrel. I got it from Sears in 1967...and a box of Sears ammo. I've never checked ammo over a chrony so i can't say much about velocity. There's a nice set of peep sights on it and I wouldn't shoot at a deer past 100 ~125 yds...mostly because I like deer. If and when i shoot at one, I want to make a clean kill. If hunting distances move out, I'll move up in caliber choice.

Just trying to keep my hunter ethic in tact.

Mark
 
Advertisements are designed to sell things, not provide useful, or even factual information.

Did you ever see an advertisement for "Sea Monkeys" when you were a kid? The ones with a picture of the cute, blond haired mommy sea monkey pushing her little blue eyed baby sea monkey around in a stroller?

All they were selling was brine shrimp and false illusions.

That Winchester ad is pretty much the same thing, just minus the brine shrimp...
 
Originally posted by: Scooter22
Theres a couple things that make this viable back in the day. Hunters hunted to eat and had far more experiences shooting game. They were use to long shots and using vernier sights. Plus game was plentiful and much less wary so you could get multiple shots.
It's a popular misconception that there was a lot more game back in "The Good Old Days", but neither the historical record, modern research or the conversations that I had with "Old Timers" back in my youth, support that contention.

There was plenty of game in inaccessible back country areas, but by the 1920's, deer populations in most of the US had declined to a fraction of what they'd been a century before.

As you can see in the attached chart from www.deerfriendly.com/decline-of-deer-populations there were far fewer deer then than exist today.
Things got so bad in East Texas during the depression of the 1930's, that deer, raccoons and even armadillos (known as "Hoover hogs" back then) were pretty much wiped out by men desperate to feed their hungry families.
 

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1926! Most hunters didn't have so much as a monthly periodical subscription let alone internet access providing information to tables and charts. I would venture to guess a rather large contingent of readers had never laid eyes on a ballistics chart before seeing this ad. At first glance it would have no doubt raised some eyebrows and acquired a sizable fan base. The marketing guru that came up with the idea would have gotten a nice pat on the back along with a sizable bonus. Some things never change.
 
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Originally posted by: DPris
Brine shrimp can be deadly at 500 yards, too.....
Dunno ' bout the shrimp part, but I read that the Sharps Rifle Company used to mix brine with the lube for their .50/140 bullets, otherwise shot game would spoil before the hunter could get to it since the "Big Fifty"could kill from such a long distance.

I'm sure it's true, I read about it in an old Sharps advertisement... :D
 
Interesting numbers...can I trouble someone to run numbers through your programs...Assume you call a shot at an even 500 yards, but the deer is 510 yards away. How much drop is there in that very small 2% error in distance estimation. I'm betting it's a good amount.
 
Actually, the "Big Fifty" used by buffalo hunters was the military surplus Springfield in .50-70. Buffalo Bill's "Lucretia Borgia" is a Model 1868 Springfield.

The Sharps "Big Fifty" didn't come on the market until after the buffalo were almost exterminated and was mostly a target cartridge.
 
There's something fishy about that ad. Western had it's HQ in "East Alton" Ill., not "East Aston". There is no East Aston.

Western%20ammo%20crate%20b.jpg
 
Yesterday's hype, today with a 160gr FTX BC .330 and Hodgdon's Leverlution powder achieving 2300 FPS from a 20" barrel plausible.
 
26 inches was a common and popular barrel length for a Model 94 rifle back then. Tom Horn used a 30-30 during his last few years. Compared to black-powder rounds it was hot stuff. Although Tom's last supposed long shot was only something like 210 yards.

I ran their numbers through a ballistics calulator using the BC for a Woodleigh 150gr semi-flat point. They are pretty close. The bullet would still be going 1237 fps at 500 yards. ( And 86 inches low if zeroed at 200 yards.)
 
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Interesting numbers...can I trouble someone to run numbers through your programs...Assume you call a shot at an even 500 yards, but the deer is 510 yards away. How much drop is there in that very small 2% error in distance estimation. I'm betting it's a good amount.

150-gr Sierra #2315, 2250 ft/s, 1" high at 25 yd, 0.7" sight height over bore centerline, 5 mph wind at 90, Metro conditions

500 yd = -120.5", 1077 ft/s, 1.01 s, 30.5" drift
510 yd = -128.2", 1067 ft/s, 1.04 s, 31.8" drift


Yesterday's hype, today with a 160gr FTX BC .330 and Hodgdon's Leverlution powder achieving 2300 FPS from a 20" barrel plausible.

They are claiming a BC of about .332 for their 150 gr in that ad :D

1926! Most hunters didn't have so much as a monthly periodical subscription let alone internet access providing information to tables and charts. I would venture to guess a rather large contingent of readers had never laid eyes on a ballistics chart before seeing this ad. At first glance it would have no doubt raised some eyebrows and acquired a sizable fan base. The marketing guru that came up with the idea would have gotten a nice pat on the back along with a sizable bonus. Some things never change.

+1, I figure they could get away with a lot back then. Few people had access to chronographs, rangefinders, proper information on external ballistics, etc.
 
You might also be surprised what a man living on the land with one gun, that shot it a lot, could do at long range.

I saw my old daddy shot a running coyote at over 300 with a 94 carbine one time when he was 60 years old.

Stepped out the back door, took the shot, and a second later the coyote never knew what hit him.

He sometimes practiced on rocks in the pasture behind the barn at close to 400.

(That would be with a 30-30 150 grain FP Silver-Tip in a 20" 94 carbine.)

But, he had walked every inch of that farm, built fence around it more then once.
And didn't need a range-finder to tell you exactly how far it was to the nearest fence line.
( He also fired Expert in Marine / SeaBee training in WWII)

Our little part of the worlds farmland was divided up by mile section roads & fence lines. (1,760 yards)
Sections were divided up in 1/2, (880) or 1/4, (440) or 1/8 (220) sections.

So nobody that grew up on the land needed a range-finder to tell you how far away something was!

I don't doubt a bit some of those old farmers and ranchers could put a 30-30 bullet through a deer at 500 on a good day.
Whether it would be a clean kill is another matter.

On the other-hand, they didn't need to shoot deer at 500 yards.

They could just shoot a deer in the head with a .22 while feeding the cattle if they wanted a deer.

rc
 
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