30-30 vs. 32 Winchester Special

What is the practical limit of range for these cartridges for hunting?
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to add to the excellent answer from Wyosmith, besides the skill of the shooter the specifics of the gun and the ammo make a difference.

In the modern era, the .30-30 & .32 Special are regarded as 150yd or less deer rounds, in average hands, in the most common rifles.

The typical Win 94 or Marlin 336 has sights that aren't well suited for long range precision, and while individual guns can be quite good, in general they aren't target triggers.

And the blunt nose bullets required by tubular mags impose limits of their own.

150grFP in a win/marlin carbine is the average standard

Shoot a 150gr Spitzer from a scoped .30-30 Contender or bolt gun and you have a different practical limit, for the average shooter.

And of course, there are fine shots, with decades of experience with a particular gun and load that can make good hits at frankly unbelievable distances.
 
"I always thought 30-30 implied 30 caliber with 30 grains of holy black (powder), like 44-40."

Nope.

Remember, this was a period of great transition with the advent of smokeless powder.

The .25-35 and the .30-30 were the first two commercial cartridges introduced using the new powder. They were originally to come out in 1894, along with the rifle, but Winchester had a number of problems with the new technology.

First was the new nickel steel for smokeless powder. It was a lot more difficult to work than the older mild steels that had been suitable for use with black powder.

Then there was the simple fact that Winchester wasn't able to get workable quantities of smokeless powder. The manufacturing processes were new and unproven, a lot of powder had to be trashed during production or shortly after production because it was unsuitable (or even chemically unstable), and much of the powder that was being produced was going to the military for use in the .30-40 Krag.

The original loading for the .30-30 was 30 grains of smokeless powder which is where the term .30-30 came from (same with the .25-35).

With the exception of those three cartridges, .25-35, .30-30, and .30-40, the old black powder nomenclature for the new smokeless rounds didn't stick.

In fact, I've only ever seen that nomenclature used with one other smokeless cartridge, in an old book on the powder industry that is scanned on line...

The cartridge, called the .30-45, became better known as the .30-03 Springfield.
 
blackpowder

Old Smokey and Wyosmith have got it. The .32 revolved around the concept that the cartridge would be reloaded using BP, and I suppose lead slugs.

There was an interesting article in "Rifle" magazine in recent years that addressed the .32 Special, by either Barnsness or Scovill.
 
Because it duplicates (or comes somewhat close) to duplicating the original load weight and velocity for the .30-30?

No.

When the .30-30 was introduced there were probably about 4 smokeless rifle powders available -- none of which are available today.

It could as easily have been the .30-26.5 or the .30-33.
 
Both cartridges will down deer sized animals without any problems when the shooter does his part. Despite their ages of over 100 years, they're still popular hunting cartridges here in Pennsylvania.
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That is an understatement! Back when I was first starting out the 30/30 was considered ideal all around, big game North American load that included Moose, Black and Brown bear.

If the hunter does his part, a 44/40 will take deer. The 30/30 is way more capable than that. The popularity is not what it once was. I do see less model 94 on the shelf since production shifted to high price Japanese models. The 94 is a nice light gun, where a scope is not needed. Everyhting goes in cycles, it may come back in some future nostalgia deal, like the 45/70. Who would imagine that round would rate like it does today?
 
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25-35 case capacity is less than the 30-30 case. Interesting that the designation "35" was used. On Hodgdon's web page, H380 is the heaviest charge they list for the 25-35 at 30 gr. I suppose that the powder at the time the cartridge was popular could have been more dense, but it seems counterintuitive to me. Growing up in a house with guns of both calibers I always wondered how the numerical designation came about. :confused:
 
Colorado,
I wondered the exact same thing, I have a 25-35 and can find no loads that use 35grs of smokeless powder. Maybe the 35 designation was for Black powder?
 
The .25-35 was NEVER loaded with black powder.

And remember...

Smokeless powders today often have very little in common with smokeless powders 100 years or more ago.

ESPECIALLY rifle powders..

But... given that cartridge naming was as imprecise back then as it is now, it's entirely possible that both names are simply approximations of the amount of powder that was loaded in the cartridge.

Or it might be a complete and utter fabrication.
 
I bet the 38-40 would have been more popular if they had named it 40-40 or 40-38 instead of getting it bass ackwards.
 
I may have loading data for the .25-35 and .30-30 in my old Ideal catalogs. I think the oldest one I have is from around 1916, so that may provide some insight on what the recommended loads were at that time.

OK, found a PDF of a circa 1951 Lyman/Ideal catalog...

http://www.nzha.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/IdealHandbook38.pdf

Heaviest load shown for the .25-35 is 32 grains of IMR 4320.

But that's 55 years after the cartridge came out, and I'm pretty sure that by that time all of the rifle powders available in 1895 had been discontinued.

.30-30 shows a couple of loads using 30 grains of smokeless powder...


MMMMMmmmmmmmmmm!

Now this is interesting!

I may be wrong about the available of powders, because one of the loads shown for the .30-30 is...

170-gr. jacketed bullet
23.6 grains of Lightning smokeless powder, and the most interesting annotation...

Original load

If that truly was the original load for the .30-30, that opens up a whole new can of worms.

Why did Marlin pick 30 for the second number when the original loading (Lightning was the original powder, but it MAY have changed over the years and charges may have changed with it) may not have been 30 grains?

Could it have been a number based on how many grains of black powder the case could hold, even though it was never intended to be loaded with smokeless?

If so, why was the smaller .25-cal. cartridge named 35, since I don't believe that the case will hold 35 grains of black powder (based on the capacity of the .32-40)...

I've got to find some older loading data, as in pre World War I...


Anyone have any Ideal manuals that are that old? I really don't feel like shelling out the prices they're bringing.
 
Could it have been a number based on how many grains of black powder the case could hold, even though it was never intended to be loaded with smokeless?
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An entirely plausible supposition especially since it was posted previously that almost all early transitional powder reloaders used black powder.

Someone with a grandfather, great grandfather or great uncle still alive who handloaded way back in the day ask about it this Thanksgiving and see if you can discover and share some knowledge before it is lost to the ages.
 
"Someone with a grandfather, great grandfather or great uncle still alive who handloaded way back in the day ask about it this Thanksgiving and see if you can discover and share some knowledge before it is lost to the ages."

Unfortunately that's not really going to get you there anymore.

That level of knowledge is now into, at the earliest, the early 1930s, well into the time frame that smokeless had taken over.
 
I have at home a Gun Encyclopedia from the late 1950's by a gentelman named Henry Stebbins. A very cool book with lots of info about rifles and cartridges, 25-35 is in the chapter about "Brush Cartridges". I will give it a look when I get home today, he goes back quite at bit in his writings.
 
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That level of knowledge is now into, at the earliest, the early 1930s, well into the time frame that smokeless had taken over.
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Yep, they will have to be well into their 80's at least and have an intact memory about it. But there's still a handful of human hard drives out there who haven't been reformatted quite yet.
 
I'd say that chances of finding anyone still alive from that era who actually has/remembers that kind of information is about the same as winning the lottery.

On Mars.
 
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