The 180 gr '06 has and will kill anything in Africa - most things quite handily. As our writer notes, the literature is full of American sportsmen, among them, indeed, Hemingway and Ruark, using the round on everything from dik-dik to buffalo and rhino. And while some of the failures could be laid at the doorstep of the caliber, the real culprits were bad shooting over open sights and abysmal bullet construction. An issue which plagued every non-Woodliegh firing rifle until well past WWII. Would it be my choice for heavy game today? Of course not. Is it a charge stopper? Nope - not that either. But it can, with the right bullet, do almost anything if it must. And as a plains game, deer, or sheep rifle it is really operating in its performance zone.
Military applications drive design in a lot of interesting ways. And as you might imagine, there is as much debate as there is consensus. Our writer forgets that as important as terminal effects, from the military perspective, are amounts of ammunition which can be carried by the individual soldier and the effect of X number of rounds on the supply system. Also worked into the equation are training and tactics. For instance the 30-06 was born into a world of bolt actions and general purpose machine guns. It was accurate and tactics called for real marksmanship and aimed rifle fire. The developers based their understanding of the dominance of the rifle on the American Civil and Franko Prussian Wars where most casualties were inflicted by rifles and where the 30-06 (and 8mm mauser, etc) seemed very transportable compared to the traditional late 19th century basic load of 60 rounds. And of course every country followed and evaluated trends of its allies and potential enemies. By not doing so, we managed to send infantry up Kettle and San Juan Hills largely armed with trapdoor Springfields against Spaniards armed with mausers. By the end of WWII, fire dominance and fire suppression had become the primary tactics of the day. This was driven by the proliferation of auto and semi-automatic weapons manned by barely trained conscript armies on battlefields where artillery fire had become the primary killer. Caliber per-se began to slip in importance. Hence, volume of fire to achieve fire superiority, became the overriding tactical goal. Small arms fire volume would fix the enemy in place so he could be destroyed by artillery and/or air strikes. Therefore numbers of rounds in the basic load became gradually more important than terminal effects. That munitions downsizing process went through the .308 to the eventual 5.65. Certainly terminal effects would never create a requirement for a .223 caliber infantry weapon (and don't believe the urban myth about tumbling .223's tearing off arms and legs) - but volume of fire did. Hopefully, that pendulum has begun to swing back. Afghanistan has again proven the value of aimed rifle fire with a need for adequate down-range effect. Were the Army not so hamstrung for funding (since Donald Rumsfeld and his cadre of "shock and awe" smart munition advocates arrived on the scene through the current administration), I am confident we would have by now already moved back up the caliber ladder to a 6.5mm or something similar.
Sigh, sorry about the lecture. The writer struck a cord. Nothing worse than someone writing down their nose to whom he believes are the ignorant and unwashed without laying out a complete or accurate foundation for his thesis. Particularly, when I personally believe that thesis is nonsense. Long live the 30-06.
