The .30-30 Winchester is basically a scaled-down version of the .30-40 Krag.

When the U.S. military adopted the Krag-Jorgensen rifle in 1892, it introduced America's first smokeless-powder cartridge, the .30-40 Krag. A few years later, Winchester offered the .30-40 in its Model 95 lever-action, which was a good move since for a time it was by far the most popular chambering in that rifle.

.30-30 During that same time, a new lever-action rifle called the Model 94 was under development at Winchester, and since its action was too short to handle the .30-40 Krag, the firm came up with a scaled-down version of it called the .30 Winchester Central Fire, or .30-30 Winchester as millions of deer hunters know it today.

Not many writers write about the .30-30 anymore simply because it is not as glamorous as the latest super-snubby magnums, but I can tell you it kills deer just as dead today as it did back when it was introduced more than a century ago. A good rifleman who stays cool under pressure, knows where a bullet needs to be placed, has the ability to put it there, and hunts in areas where shots at deer are seldom greater than 200 yards will find the .30-30 quite capable of bringing home the venison.

My favorite rifles in this caliber are a Marlin 336, a Winchester 54, and a Thompson/Center Contender Carbine. I have taken quite a few deer with all three, but my Model 54 holds the edge in accuracy.

Bullets of 150 and 170 grains are the traditional weights for the .30-30, and I have never been able to see any difference in their performance on deer. Place either close behind the shoulder of the biggest buck in the woods, and you've got steaks and chops for the table and antlers on the wall. When putting together deer loads for bolt-action and single-shot rifles, I usually stick with pointed bullets weighing from 125 to 150 grains because they shed less velocity downrange than blunt-nose bullets.

.300 Savage
The next short thirty to come along was the .300 Savage. Introduced in 1920 in the Model 99 and Model 1920 rifles, it is a shortened version of the .30-06, and it pretty much duplicated the performance of that cartridge as it was loaded in those days. The .300 was eventually loaded with several bullet weights, but 150 grains at 2,700 fps and 180 grains at 2,400 fps were the most common.

Through the years, I have hunted with several rifles in .300 Savage, and my all-time favorite is a Remington Model 81. While I have never been a great fan of autoloading rifles, I fell for that homely old "Eighty One" the first time I held it in my hands. More important, each and every deer I have shot with it either dropped in its tracks or traveled no more than 50 yards after taking a bullet.