30 WCF (AKA 30-30) was taking deer long before 30-06 ever even existed.

It's still a great deer cartridge for 250 yards or less. 30-06 is great for ranges beyond that.

FPNI...

Insert humor: Freightliner

I've killed 12 with a 30-30. Then stepped to an auto 243.

I haven't killed any with a .30-30.  Only a few with a .30-06.

You can really improve the performance of the 30-30 with modern powders and spitter bullets.

The trick is to load two rounds into the tube and then cycle the action. This no pointer top of a spritzer resting on a primer. It really flattens the old girl out.

My guess would be bows and spears if you’re looking over the whole length of time.

Followed by 22lr then 3030 for more modern times.

I would guess 30-30 if we are sticking to deer. I’ve always thought it would be neat if caliber used was one of the game check questions. It would be a fairly useless statistic but it would be cool for use gun guys.

The 30-30 came out in 1895, the 30-06 in 1906. That's only an 11 year difference. The 30-30 was the Winchester model 94. Outside of that it was pretty limited. There were some other lever actions like a Marlin 336 that came much, much later, but I've only ever seen one bolt action and it wasn't well liked. I've never seen a semi auto or pump action. There are single shots like H&R's, but how many people chose a single shot 30-30 over a single shot 243 or similar?

I suspect at a certain timeframe the Winchester model 94 was the most popular deer rifle in the world. Specifically most were sold to baby boomers in the 70's. I would guess the 60's-80's to be golden 30-30 years. Beyond that though, I'm going to have to say the 30-06 has killed more deer. Between all the dirt cheap military rifles, and bolt actions in general, the 30-06 has always been consistently popular. The 30-06 was talked about in magazines way, way back. It's been offered in lever actions, bolt actions, pump actions, semi autos, full autos, everything.

I don't know, but I can't think of a single person close to me that has hunted anything with a 30-30 lever action in the last 20 years. That includes my dad who has owned a model 94 most of his life, and used it decades ago. I just don't see it, I have to think the 30-06 has killed more deer than a 30-30.

Ya know my knee jerk reaction was 30-30 but after reading your comment I think your assessment is probably pretty spot on!

I think the 30-06 is a clear winner here.  Even though there were definitely times where the 30-30 was more popular, I think the aught six takes it.  

I know I've killed more deer with my 30-06 than with my 30-30.  I do still take the 30-30 out with me though especially when we're doing drives.  It's light, nimble, and quick.  I've killed a few with it.  Much easier to take deer with a scoped 30-06 bolt action though.  Which is why that's my main deer rifle.  


I have a 32-40 Winchester 94 that my grandpa gave me.  I plan on taking a few deer with it in the next few years.  He stopped hunting with it because he couldn't reliably find ammo for it anymore.  I've found some reloading components for it and plan to use those.

I'd also ask which one has wounded/lost more deer, too.

When I was younger I knew three old guys that started off with .30-30's.  Over time, due to having to shoot deer more than once and sometimes losing one, two of them moved to Rem. 35's and the other to a 12 ga. shotgun.

All three said they never had to shoot a deer more than once after trading in those .30-30's.  All three went to .30-06 deer rifles later in life.  They continued the one shot one kill record with the .30-06.

I'm pretty sure which ever caliber is most common, is the one that also wounds the most deer. At 100 yards there's really no difference between a 30-30 and a 30-06. Both will blow through a deer shoulder bone and keep going. In the midwest, the 12 gauge has wounded more deer than any other caliber in the last 75 years bar none. Now that rifles of some kind are allowed in most of the midwest, that won't be the case much longer.

I really like the 243 winchester. It wasn't that long ago you found rifles on the racks at every gun shop just like 308's and 223's. Today it seems you can't hardly find a 243 at all half the time. The really, really bizarre thing is it seems to be overshadowed by the 6mm Creedmoor, which is bascally just 6mm Remington with less body taper and a slightly shorter case, actually a tiny bit less case capacity than 6mm Remington. It's pretty much the same as a 243 Winchester. Yet despite the tiny advantage of 6mm Remington with the larger case capacity, and the perceived advantage of a longer neck, most people bought the 243 Winchester. I refuse to believe it was all due to Remington's choice of twist rate at first. I even owned a 6mm Remington before passing it along to my brother. A Savage 110 with custom 27" barrel, and put in a big laminated stock. It was one of the few rifles I can honestly say was more accurate than I needed it to be.

Despite that, I would still rather have a 243 Winchester, it's just too popular. Still it seems the 6mm Creedmoor is gaining for some unknown reason to me. Markets are so weird. The same 6.5 mm cartridges of some form came and went for decades, Remington even knocked it out of the park with the 260 Remington. And yet none of them ever really took hold until the entirely unremarkable 6.5 Creedmoor came along offering nothing special except the name. Marketing is a crazy thing.

The only one I'll disagree with is the 7mm-08. The 270 Winchester came out over 50 years beforehand, and the 7mm-08 still got a decent following. It's still decently popular, just not as much as a 270 is. It was never really meant to compete with 270, and it was a nice short handy cartridge.

The 6mm Remington is perfect, came out same time 243 did, arguably a better design cartridge, and offers a smidge more power. That's a real headscratcher. That's all marketing for sure, and I'm sure Winchester went hard on Remingtons early mistakes.

The 280 Remington was the real competitor to the 270 Winchester, and I don't see how it ever could have succeeded. There's nothing wrong with it, but there's also nothing it does that the 270 hadn't for decades by that point. They are pretty much the same cartridge with only the tiniest differences. I have to look at the handstamp to even tell which is which. It came out decades late, and the 270 was already wildly popular. This was Remington just being stupid.

I still own a 6.5 Rem Mag, although it's a Competitor Corp. pistol. It's a fine cartridge, but it came out at a bad time to be a 6.5mm. The 264 Win Mag which was similar, but bigger failed too. I also own a 350 Rem mag barrel for the same pistol, and it too failed to the 358 Winchester. I'm thinking these two cartridges were mostly for the XP100 handgun at the time.

The 260 Remington had it in the bag. The 308 was wildly popular. The 243 Winchester was wildly popular. The 7mm-08 had a good following at the time. Winchester hadn't made a good 6.5 cartridge yet. AR's were getting really popular. The time was perfect for a 6.5mm version with high velocity that would work in both AR's and short action bolt actions. The 6.5mm-08 wildcat had been popular for years. The 6.5x55 Swede was too long for the AR's. The 6.5 Grendel hadn't been invented yet, which also failed to catch on. The only thing Remington could have done better is wait a couple more years when the semi-auto ban expired, but they had no idea what the future held. It wasn't a rocket, but it was a great low recoil round based off a cartridge that up this point all had done pretty well. The 358 Winchester (another 308 based cartridge) was as popular as any 35 caliber rifle ever. And then nobody really cared. It did as well as any other 6.5mm ever did in the USA. Not even the 6.5 Grendel got popular which is the only AR15 cartridge that made sense that didn't catch on. If that was the end of it, oh well, American's just don't like 6.5mm's for some reason. That wasn't the case though, about a decade later Hornady came out with their 6.5 Creedmoor which does nothing that amazing, less capacity than a 260 remington, but too big to fit in an AR15... and it catches on like wildfire more than any other cartridge in 30 years at least. Maybe I'm bitter, but it does not make a damn bit of sense. I can't wrap my head around it, and I refuse to own one just out of spite for how stupid the whole thing is.

P.S. I also consider the 300 WSM obsolete. I can't even remember the last time I've heard anyone talk about it. I don't remember the last time I've ever seen a rifle chambered for that.