The weary argument, advantages of 308/30-06 for most domestic big-game hunting:
1) Smooth feeding and non-stick extraction. The tapered 308/30-06 cartridge was designed for smooth operation in military bolt-action (later auto-loading) rifles.
By contrast, feeding, and particularly extraction, with “modern” (generally fatter and straight-walled) hunting cartridges is much rougher. This is not a particular concern for most bolt-action rifles, but it is critical for autoloading rifles, particularly when they are pressed-into service for serious purposes!
2) Ammunition availability. Even today, 308/30-06 ammunition is easy to find and available for purchase nearly any place that sells ammunition. No so with many esoteric “modern” calibers.
3) Reliable weapon operation. At the sacrifice of at least some “academic accuracy,” rifles (particularly military rifles) chambered for 308/30-06 are designed from the ground up with adequate clearances to insure reliable operation under a wide variety of environmental conditions and temperatures.
By contrast, “modern” hunting cartridges, along with “modern” hunting rifles tend to be overly tight and temperamental, intolerant of airborne grit, mud (all for the sake of increased “academic accuracy”).
However, so long as you keep your big-game hunting shots within 300m, such “academic accuracy” is mostly irrelevant.
Within 200m, it is utterly irrelevant!
And, when thus confining your shots to reasonable ranges, you won’t feel the irresistible prerequisite of firmly implanting a maladroit tripod to support your rifle prior to every opportunity for taking your shot!
Regardless of its ostensible distance potential, any big-game bullet should be considered at the limit of its useful range when its velocity drops below 2k f/s. Thus, even though (at least in theory) a particular bullet can consistently strike within a 20cm circle at 1k meters, when its velocity at that range is only 1200 f/s, the whole exercise is meaningless!
I have no problem with those who enjoy participating in quaint “tedious exercises in academic accuracy” (with “rifles” that are little more than a barreled-action, stapled to a railroad tie), so long as they confine their curious ballistic theories to perforating a thin layer of cardboard at increasingly-ridiculous distances, but graciously refraining from testing their preposterous-distance ballistic theories on innocent game animals.
/John
