![Installing Gear Drive 308 Winchester Installing Gear Drive 308 Winchester](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/NYyW4AafOHE/maxresdefault.jpg)
![Installing Gear Drive 308 Winchester Installing Gear Drive 308 Winchester](http://www.gunblast.com/images/Henry-LongRanger308/DSC06817.jpg)
Gear Review: SharkGunleather Bed Mattress Gun Holster with Flashlight Loop. Read the Chevy High Performance tech article on installing a camshaft, brought to you by the experts at Chevy High Performance Magazine.
I get this one a lot from different customers, as well as those looking for the consummate rifle to do it all. I’d have thought that by now—some 56 years after the introduction of the as a sporting round—the feud would have settled down, but it certainly doesn’t look that way. I think this may be the one of the most heated debates in firearms history, and seemingly without much cause, as the two cartridges are very similar in performance levels. However, each camp has an army, and rocks continue to be hurled across the front lines. The is, undoubtedly, the American darling.
It has proven its value on the battlefield as well as in the game fields for well over a century, and earned its place in the annals of cartridge history. It has been used—with varying degrees of success—on every species of game animal that walks the earth. One of the secrets of its success is the fact that it offers quite a bit of bullet weight and killing power without beating the snot out of the shooter. Born for war, it brought the American Military into the modern era, delivering sleek spitzer bullets for the first time, and definitely increasing the effective range of the shoulder-fired weapon. It shows its heritage—sharing the same case head design as the —but uses a 63mm case length. The first incarnation, the.30-03 Springfield, used the same heavy, round-nosed bullets as the.30-40 Krag (our previous military cartridge), but was quickly revised to the good old.30-06 we all know and love. It was adored by Roosevelt, Hemingway, Fitz and may other early hunters who inspired our grandfathers, and remains a perfectly sound choice as a hunting cartridge today.
It works so well it’s almost boring. The was born from the idea that modern (late 1940s) smokeless powder would generate the same velocities from a shorter cartridge. Shorter equals not only lighter, but a cartridge that requires less raw materials to produce.
The soldier could carry more ammunition, and the field results were so close that the Army felt it worth the time. Experimentation began with the.300 Savage cartridge, but the final incarnation was the 7.62x51mm NATO, released to the sporting public in 1952 (two years prior to military adoption) as the.308 Winchester. It was hailed as a shorter version of the.30-06, and immediately started a cartridge war. Both cartridges use the same.308″ diameter bullets, and both have a case capacity large enough to push those bullets to sensible, useable velocities. Those who swore allegiance to the pointed out the slight velocity advantage that the larger case offers, and how it handles the heavier bullets so much better. Those in favor of the new-kid-on-the-block pointed out how much lighter the shorter action rifles were, as well as the fact that the shorter action offered better rigidity, and therefore a better level of accuracy. The was offered with a 1:12″ twist rate barrel (as opposed to the Springfield’s usual 1:10″) and wouldn’t stabilize the long 220-grain bullets.
While I have used those heavyweights, in my, I really don’t know too many people who hunt with the 220s anymore. My Dad joined the National Guard in 1968, and with an M14 in his hands at Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri, was hitting human silhouettes at 350 meters with iron sights. He was sold on the before I was conceived, and in my house, there was but one cartridge, and all else was nonsense. I had friends whose fathers were equally adamant about the Springfield, having given testimony that the shots they made would have resulted in failure if they had any other rifle in hand.
Personally, I began my career with a.30-30 Winchester in hand, and I couldn’t see the difference between the.308 and.30-06, at least on deer. Both killed a deer quickly and effectively, and other than one being longer, the field results were inconsequential. So what’s the big deal? What are the real differences between the two highly respectable.30s? Well, each has come to be the basis for its respective action-length, with the.308 case measuring 2.015″, and the.30-06 measuring 2.494″. The.30-06 does have a definite velocity advantage, bettering the.308’s velocity by about 100-125 fps.
Does that translate into a decided advantage in the field? No, no it doesn’t. Does the difference in action length actually make a difference in speed of a follow up shot? Not in my experiences.