Author: Article & Photos by Jeff Davis

Is going old-school my ticket to fresh backstraps instead of tag soup this season?

I think too much.

 

In and of itself, that’s not a bad thing. However, too often I’m thinking of things that are useless, of no value, or that just lead to more work for me. It’s not all bad, like the time I figured out how to cure pork bellies for a week in a cooler to make bacon, because there was no room in the refrigerator (they turned out great – but that’s another story).

The Henry Repeating Arms Company started in 1996 in Brooklyn, New York, and is proud to state that their firearms are “Made in America Or Not Made At All.”

On the other hand, I’ve come to the realization that I may actually spend more time thinking about hunting than I spend actually hunting, and that’s not good. I come up with some odd ways to hunt, thinking they will improve my hunting experience. I’ve enjoyed hunting just as much with a classic Savage .30-06 bolt rifle as when toting a WWII-era M1 Garrand into the deer woods. But reality has never stopped my daydreams.

Which leads me to the upcoming season, and my newest concept – Everything Old is New Again.

In my endless musing, I realized that I had never shot a .30-30. In fact, I had never even held a rifle chambered for .30-30. Well, deep in the middle of my non-linear noggin, the decision to hunt old-school with an open-sight .30-30 rifle was made. Now I just have to make it happen.

126 Years Young

The .30-30 cartridge was introduced in 1895, and over the ensuing 126 years, it has been claimed that this round has taken more deer than any other cartridge. I can’t find any solid documentation for that, but it makes sense. It has been very popular over the entire time it’s existed, and while it is not common among hunters I know, I didn’t have to look very hard to find many, many hunters who have used it forever, with great success.

It was the first commercial cartridge that used smokeless powder, which was a revolutionary advancement in firearm technology. Finding this out created a great deal of confusion for me, because I had always believed that the second ‘30’ in the .30-30 designation referred to a load of 30 grains of black powder that powered the bullet, so reading that it was never loaded with black powder seemed, well, confusing. As with many things involving firearms, history does not travel in a straight line.

	When I told my father-in-law I was working on a .30-30 story, he went in the basement and returned with this assortment of ammo, and credited the .30-30 with taking half of the deer he has ever shot. It would be more, but he lived in a shotgun-only area for many years. The Remington Kleanbore box on the top right is likely from the 1960s.

The Winchester website (winchester.com) explained that the iconic Winchester Model 94 lever-action rifle was introduced a year earlier, in 1894, in two blackpowder calibers, the .32-40 and .38-55. In both of these rounds, the second number does indicate the powder charge – 40 and 55 grains of black powder – respectively. The next year, 1895, Winchester introduced a Model 94 with a more robust nickel-steel barrel that could take the increased pressure that the smokeless powder produced, and the new cartridge for that improved rifle was first called the ‘.30 Winchester Center Fire.’ However, other ammunition companies did not want to promote the Winchester name on their boxes of ammo, and the name was changed to .30-30, because it used 30-grains of smokeless powder and that would follow the nomenclature of the day (even though 30 grains of smokeless powder produced much more energy than 30 grains of black powder).

And for the late 1800s this was a screaming machine – to the extent that bullet design had to advance to keep up with the higher velocities. Many blackpowder cartridges at that time exited the barrel at 1,200 to 1,600 feet per second, but the .30 WCF had muzzle velocities approaching 2,000 fps, and at that speed, an all-lead bullet would leave excessive amounts of lead inside the barrel, causing fouling and reduced energy. In addition, the lead bullets would deform excessively when hitting a target and fail to penetrate properly. Ammunition companies started to jacket the bullets with copper or brass, fixing both problems and greatly improving bullet performance.

All in all, the modern, high-performance combination of a jacketed bullet, smokeless powder, and an easy-handling rifle able to be reloaded blazingly fast was a potent combination – so much so that Winchester has sold more than 8 million Model 94s over the last century, with many, many other companies offering their own rifles in .30-30.

 

Today’s .30-30

Some see the .30-30 as old, tired, and anemic compared to a .308 or .30-06 (even though the .30-06 was first adopted in 1906, only 11 years after the .30-30). Granted, there are dozens of calibers and loads faster, flatter, and fancier than the .30-30, but after looking at where and how I hunt, I do not need anything ‘better.’ I rarely have need for even a 100-yard shot, and I work diligently and patiently for a solid aiming point. I have no problem passing on a less-than-optimal sight picture.

There is a wide variety of ammunition, most commonly in 150- to 170-grain soft points, moving at 2,000 to 2,400 fps, more than enough to drop the biggest whitetail with that well-aimed shot. When Hornady introduced their LEVERevolution ammunition, with the soft, pointed tip, the bullets gained greatly in ballistic coefficient and retained energy, making the effective range well over 200 yards. Several other ammo companies have similar ammunition, putting the ballistic performance of the .30-30 close to many other calibers.

The .30-30 (center) was revolutionary when introduced, but is on the low end of the power list today. The .30-06 (left) has much more power and can be topped with pointed bullets, which are aerodynamically superior to the round-nose bullets used on the .30-30. The .45-70, introduced 22 years before the .30-30, used a straight wall design, and had a bullet more than twice the weight of the .30-30. The red tip on the .45-70 (right) is a modern improvement – Hornady’s LEVERevolution ammo uses an elastomer tip that improves performance but is safe to use in tubular magazines.

The tubular magazine (which can be loaded via the side gate or by opening the tube and loading from the front) holds five rounds, and cycling the lever to reload is extremely fast. Recoil is mild compared to a .30-06 or a .308, and this Henry rifle has a heavy octagonal barrel which further dampens the recoil.

I’ve also decided to go with open sights. I don’t know why – maybe it’s just because I’ve got these nifty new artificial corneas in my old, tired eyeballs and I want to test them to see if they are as good as my ophthalmologist says. Yes, I love my modern scopes, but what’s life without a challenge?

The “Dinosaur Rifle’

I know some people who personify their firearm, often by giving it a name. I wasn’t one of those people – until now.

When I was a kid, the prevailing theory on dinosaurs was that they were lumbering, slow-witted, giant lizards that ruled the Earth for millions of years and died out because they could not adapt. Well, the millions of years was correct, but today dinosaurs are recognized as being complex, successful, fast moving creatures, sometimes with multifaceted social structures, and their time on the planet ended because of a cataclysmic global extinction event – not because they were slow and useless.

  So, at least in my mind, being called a ‘dinosaur’ is not the insult it once was – perhaps also because as I get older, I find that appellation applied to me on a more regular basis. However, I did not first apply the Dinosaur Rifle moniker to this Henry .30-30. Henry calls this model a “Color Case Hardened Lever Action Side Gate,” and while it is completely descriptive, it hardly rolls off the tongue. Using the acronym CCHLASG is even worse. My rifles are typically referred to by something like ‘the Marlin,’ ‘the .45-70,’ ‘the BLR’ (Browning Lever Rifle), and even ‘the old 10/22’ and ‘the new 10/22.’

I've always been a fan of how color case hardening looks, and when Henry introduced their line of CCH lever rifles with the side-gate loading, I decided that I had found the .30-30 I wanted. While I have several other Henry rifles, they have their own names: the Big Boy (.44 Magnum), Golden Boy (.22 LR), and a .45-70. But the first time my son saw the new .30-30, he closely examined the color case hardened receiver and said, “This looks like dinosaur skin!”

While I understand that no one really knows what dinosaur skin looked like, that description was good enough for me. Color case hardening is not a completely predictable process, and both colors and patterns are highly variable. Each manufacturer, process, and even each craftsperson from company to company can produce different results. This can range from brilliant, glossy, intense colors to what I have on this rifle – a more subdued, striated, and mottled collection of blues, grays, and browns. Exactly what I want in a hunting rifle to take into the field, rather than a showpiece to be displayed in a cabinet. After all, many dinosaurs were built to hunt, too.

 

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