I don't think your giving up enough to hurt you. Both my friend and I use the same load 49 gr of IMR4064 with 180 gr bullets in the '06. He busted a bull elk up pretty good this year at 289 yds. So I don't think your WI deer are going to notice a difference.

2600 fps is plenty for any cartridge for deer. Bullet construction and placement are the other 2 keys, with placement beingking.

The 30-30 has been killing big game for well over 100 years. It would love to see a velocity anywhere near 2600 fps. I used the 150 grain Nosler Partition and the 150 Grain speer GS fo deer in my 30-06 with great results. For some reason though I have had better performance with 180-190 grain bullets in the 308.

If a deer can be killed with a 243, all you should have to do to kill a deer with the 30-06 is to show the deer a picture of it.

yeah, 2600 fps with the bullet weight of an -06 will be plenty of power to toss 'em out to 200yds