bolt rilfe, '06
Most of my experience with the '06 cartridge has been with the Garand. But one afternoon I ambled into a local shop and there was a very nice looking Mannlicher stocked bolt carbine on the used rack. Turns out it was an Interarms Mark X in '06 with 20" barrel. Had a very nice Lyman peep (???) on it too. I noted that the butt stock had been cut very short and the price was adjusted accordingly, and I left with it. A pal that runs a stock fitting operation added a mag thicknes recoil pad, which doesn't look too bad and the rifle now points and handles well. I learned quickly that I could not see with the peep sights well enough in the late PM to ethically shoot game at all but very close distances ( and that problem has escalated yrs later). But a Leupold 6x36 looks nice and tidy on the gun and has since served well.
Of course I wanted to shoot it right away, but I did not have a lot of slugs, this was in the midst of the ammo and component crises ......I did not want to dip into my supply of .30/150's for the .308 and the Garands......but what I did have was some 200 gr Nosler Partitions that I could not foresee ever shooting at game with, so I slapped some ammo together with no particular care, and took the MarkX and its 6x to the range. Holy smokes!!!
Two things immediately apparent... 1)the 20" barreled .30'06 kicked and bellowed with those big Noslers . ...2) the carbine was incredibly accurate with those long heavy bullets, despite my slack approach to the loads. I had a great uncle who maintained that the '06 with 180 gr RN was the "best killer in the woods" and so in Harry's honor, I eventually got around to loading a quantity of Sierra 180 RN. I did not run these loads full throttle, ending up at about 2450 fps. These 180's shot stunningly well too. I realize that a .30/180 at 2450 fps is NOT what the '06 is really capable of (it's more like .300 Savage numbers) but it is more than sufficient for whitetails in the woods. It may well be that the long heavy RN slugs really do seem to hit a bit harder than lighter, pointed bullets, my limited kills with the load being bang flops. I'd add that 2400 fps or so was about what I was getting with the full power 200 grains slugs, but with a good bit more drama!
The Mark X is a looker and often draws comments from those that see it, and there is something satisfying about those long cases and big RN slugs when you bolt one up and settle into a stand.