Gotta love the .308 cartridge!!
 

This morning I drove out to the outdoor wildlife area's 100 yard rifle range. It opened at 9:00am, so I wanted to be among the first ones there (it can get PACKED, if you know what I mean!).

Anyway, I own a late 90's model Savage 110, but yet chambered in the legendary .308 (aka - 7.62 NATO). From what I understand, back then Savage Arms was really hurting financially, and about to go Chapter 11 or whatever or something like that. They decided to take the long action & short action models, and remanufacture them to fit in one main long action stock -- the model 110. Everything: .30-06, .270, .25-06, .308, .243, etc... For the short action models, what they did (can't really see it inside) is, they installed a metal/wooden "block" to fit inside behind the short action internal magazine. So you have a long action bolt, chamber, slide, etc... but yet combined with a short action magazine. Somehow, they made it work!

See... Isn't she pretty? :love:


Also, as seen below, I scanned two of my targets after I got home. I tested out my Savage .308 at 100 yards with the elevation set to 1" high and locked into a secure bench rest. Wicked groupings from a solid bench rest! Woo-hoo!!! :happy0001:


Here is the last target, after I realized that I didn't need to do anything to my Savage .308 besides continue to use 168gr BTHP rounds! Talk about being a "tack driver"! Wow!! Here I put down the secure bench rest, hiked out there 100 yards, and strung up another target. I just hand held my Savage, propped up on my elbows on the big wooden bench & seat at the outdoor range. I stayed focused, breathed, relaxed, and gently squeezed the trigger, and fired a few shots to see how I'd do WITHOUT a solid, secure, bench rest. I'd say whatever deer I go after will be DOA and I'll have venison on the table! :woot:

Good deal. I only got into hunting back in 2013 and needed to buy a rifle. Ended up with a Savage Model 11 in .308. Love that thing, although it has lately been eclipsed by my Savage Model 11 in .338 Federal.

Between 2014 and 2018, four delicious bears and one buck fell to my .308. Mine groups well also.

This year I went back to my Mod 88 Winchester after 8 years of using my 45-70 and took a nice big doe. That .308 was the first Christmas gift from my wife when we were married in 1970, it has put a lot of deer on the ground. This year I decided I would go back to my first love and I am glad I did, it is accurate, and deadly.

Your old Savage is still a decent shooter. But today's are a bunch more accurate then that. And as for the .308 we all have our opinions and I particularly don't care for it. I've used it for several years on deer and it didn't really impress me. I have much better success with the off shoots of the parent .308 case. The .243 and 7mm-08 are IMO dispatch deer quicker than the .308. Now if all I had was a .308 and it shot as well as yours I wouldn't hesitate to use it for deer and black bear size critters. Heck even elk in a pinch.

Nothing wrong with that Butch!

-Jake

Thanks guys... Yeah, all I have for a rifle is my Savage .308. I used to own an old Marlin .30-30 and hiked all over the woods with it cradled in my hand, like so many generations did before me. But then, once I shot a buddy's .308 and saw how accurate it can be, I was hooked. I sold my .30-30 and bought the Savage 110 back in the early/mid 2000's.

Thinking back, I still miss my old .30-30. There is just something about it... Plain open sights... Nothing fancy... But the ancient cartridge has put down thousands upon thousands of deer over the decades!

Butch I hope you didn't take offense at my post. I didn't mean to. I just don't care for the .308 based on my experience with it. No doubt it is a popular competition and hunting cartridge and your Savage is more than capable of being a good hunting rifle. I have the same rifle in .243 and it served me well until I swapped it out for a Rem 700 in .270. Good luck this year.

Thanks.. No offense at all (hardly noticed any at all). I know there's dozens of capable deer hunting cartridges out there, but for me, the .308 just seems to work.

Beautiful gun you have there.

308, 270, 30-06, 7mm-08, 25-06......The deer wont know the difference.

Im a Savage fan. My Savage smokeless ML is the bees knees. Also love my 17hmr savage. I had a 111f in 7 mag but sold it. I wish I hadnt. That gun was a much better shooter than my current 700 in 30-06. I like the 700, its a beautiful older bdl model with an AMAZING trigger but just doesnt group as well as id like. That said its more than sufficient for a whitetail within 150 yrds.

Ive never had a 308 but am leaning towards an AR10.

Theres a reason some cartridges stay around forever and others fade away.

Butch you mentioned "locked into a secure bench rest". I have a nice Lead sled but have recently been using Caldwell bags. Ive read things about the sled not being good for the scope. Any opinion on this?

I've heard things about it, but no solid proof of heavy duty bench rests harming scopes. My bench rest has a strap that goes over the buttstock and cinched tight, that's all.

Why do you suppose that is? I'm sure the .243 and 7mm-08 are good for deer, but I don't understand why they'd be better than the .308. I went .308 originally because I'm primarily a bear hunter. The sales people kept pushing other calibers, like .270 on me. They would say "This is an awesome deer rifle that can also take bears", so I would have to correct them and say "I want a bear rifle that can also take deer". The wider bore appealed to me, part of why I now use my .338 mostly for bear.

Looks like a real shooter Butch. Both the rifle and the rifleman. :patriot:

@Idaholewis

That is incredible shooting!! I am just awestruck at a .308 rifle ringing a gong at 750 yards! :hail:

@Calhunter

Thanks... My Savage .308 did all the work. I had it secured in a bench rest, and I just simply peered through the scope, reached up, and squeezed the trigger! LOL!!! :biggrin:

There's very few animals in North America that won't easily succumb to a plain old 180-grain soft point from a .308. Haven't used it on bear, myself, but I love it on deer (slower bullet seems to bring better permanent wound channel for some reason; my 1:10" twist barrel likes them more than 150's) and have heard it's almost impossible to beat on black bear (unless you go up in caliber).

Agreed. I went to the .338 Federal because of the wound channel, not the killing. In 2017 I shot a bear in Maine with my .308. No blood trail. Did I miss?

Nope. When we found the bear, I actually blew the top of its heart off. Much blood inside the bear, but not enough wound channel to not plug up. So I use the .338 for the bigger channel, not because the .308 won't kill.

Also, when I bought a new scope, I didn't want to put it on the .308 because it was "so perfect" that I didn't want to mess with it, so I put it on my "experimental" .338 Federal instead (which came with a cheaper scope too). Wanted a lighted reticle. If you've ever shot black bear with a black reticle, you'll understand why.

I've wondered about that in the past but had never talked to anyone about it specifically.

I'd imagine under certain low light conditions that black reticle would just about disappear on a bear.

-Jake

Guys the problems with the Lead Sled arises from people using too much weight to hold it down. Its simply physics. For every action there's an equal and opposite reaction. When you put too much weight on the sled the recoil energy is less than the energy needed to move the sled and the rifle's stock has to absorb all of it. Depending on the stock's design, material and the amount of recoil generated this has resulted in cracked and even broken stocks. My advice, if your rifle packs a punch a isn't pleasant to shoot during sight in is to buy a slip on recoil pad for that purpose. Once the rifle is dialed in, take it off and confirm your point of impact.
I'm not recoil shy and I like my .45-70s with full house loads for hunting and I shoot them regularly. What I do hate doing is pattering a shotgun with 12 ga 3" or 3 1/2" shells. That is brutal on the shoulder and I've punched myself in the nose with my thumb more than once forgetting to roll it out of the way!

That makes all the sense in the world, yet I had never even thought about it.

Every time I shot a bear (at six now since 2014), I've had to put the reticle on the bear, then raise the gun so I could see the reticle, and lower it again. I didn't ever miss, but didn't like the process. Same reticle is fine for deer, being brown or gray.

Last two bears were taken with my .338 with the lighted reticle. Makes a huge difference. Totally worth it if you are primarily a bear hunter. My scope has 3x-18x, which is a bonus. I have yet to shoot any animal above 3x.

I've seen those lighted reticle scopes, and they are really cool looking for real dark dusk conditions. I'm primarily a deer hunter and never went after bear. I don't think I could shoot a bear (too cute & cuddly, like a teddy bear... LOL...) but then again, if one were to come AFTER ME, then obviously I'm taking action!

It's just great to see that the .308 cartridge is still the most widely accepted, universal, "do it all", type of round out there. Military snipers, home defense, target shooting, game taking, etc... and I've heard that it is among the most easiest to reload too. :)

I have a rifle chambered in 308 and have had others in the past. It is a very useful cartridge for most purposes but I never truly warmed to it. I have fired many thousand rounds of this cartridge, the vast majority of them being the military version fired in a M-60 machine gun back in the dark days of my youth. The good old 308 is basically a shortened 30-06 that was designed to feed easily through belt fed machine guns.

The 308 is a fine choice for almost all of this world's game and does a pretty fair job on the target range as well. I can not think of very many circumstances where a 308 would be inappropriate for the task at hand.

There's a bit of humor behind why I hunt bears. When the stock market tanked in 2008/2009, we looked for an alternate place to put our money, so we started buying land. When we had some, the wife said "Why not take up hunting?" I always wanted to do it, but having my own hunting grounds was an excellent kick start. Then she said "But I don't like venison, so hunt bears". I thought "Sure".

I'm not a bowhunter (yet), so the "rifle any time" nature of bear hunting (here anyway) also added to the appeal. I'll eat venison, but I too think bear tastes better.

There is also the simple fact that I suck at hunting. Up here, I think its easier to hunt bears than deer. My own record somewhat backs this up - I have taken six bears and one buck since 2014, and I hunt the entire rifle deer season every year. (A bit dishonest here, since some bears came from bear camp - I don't go to deer camp).

Incidentally, although I bought a $450 lighted reticle Vortex scope, Bushnell makes (made?) one that I bought to test about two years ago. I think it was called the "Banner". Normally $60, but I got it for $35 with a rebate (which they DID send me). Its a 1" 3x-9x 40mm typical scope with red OR green lighting.

Optically, it looks fine, but I was hesitant to trust my cub slayer to the cheap untested scope. I put it on my AR-15 and it has performed flawlessly, but I'm not convinced it would take the pounding of my .308 or .338. I had a cheap Weaver scope, on my .243 no less, wear out after two seasons. The lenses moved making it impossible to focus. Didn't want to take that chance on a bear hunt.

My Bushnell scope on my Savage .308 is the older model Bushnell Trophy 3-9x40 (now if you go to Bushnell's website, they still have the Trophy, but it is now 4-12x40 for $129 bucks. I knew of the Banner series and Dusk & Dawn series back then, but I wanted to go one model up, and got the Trophy scope. So far after all these years, it is still holding up to anything, any conditions, any weather, and hasn't lost its "zero".

"Little"?

I hope you're right, because it seems like a nice scope. At this point, it would probably go on my .308 anyway, which is "cursed" with a perfectly good unbranded Nikon scope. No reason to swap it out other than wanting the lighted reticle. When the Weaver on my .243 died, I replaced it with the Bushnell Trophy I took from my .338.

What can I say, I like short actions (no personal innuendo, please!)

I got it when CDNN had a sale. Besides the .338 Federal, they had a .300 WSM which I seriously considered, except that this particular model only held two in the magazine, whereas the .338 Fed held four.

Will I ever go more powerful? Who knows? I don't ever expect to go grizzly hunting, and out east, long range shots don't happen. Never fired a .338 Win Mag, and I'm not sure I ever want to.

The .338 federal is probably just about perfect for an Eastern bear hunter where shots are more likely to be 30 yards than 300. A 200 grain .33cal bullet at 2600+fps is great bear medicine imo.

I'm not a huge fan of the .308- only because it's so popular. I just like oddball things more. There's no denying the good things the .308 is capable of. Also- the cartridges that have come from the .308 have been a great addition to the hunting world.

The .243 and 7mm-08s have become great options for anybody, but especially for smaller shooters. I would love to have a .260rem but just have no need for it to justify it right now. The .338, 358, although not as popular, certainly do a good job for their intended purpose. I'm sure there's more that I'm not thinking of right now.

But the .308, aside from it's own capabilities, gave us lots of other fun things to play with too!

-Jake

It's also an "acquired cost" as I understand it. I typically see CoreLokts running about $4 each. What do you shoot with your .338 Win Mag?

The .338 Federal is, in my opinion, an almost perfect New England bear cartridge. Big hole, lots of power, respectable range, and tolerable recoil. The only thing the .308 has going for it over the .338 is its popularity.

This has not been my experience, not only with my own guns but with people I know. I've seen plenty that have lenses move, gaskets fall out, etc. The Banner that I have (which may be different - I think there are lighted and non-lighted "Banner" scopes) looks quite nice and would be satisfactory if tough enough. I'm not sure you can get this one anymore though.

I've seen scores of reviews online from muzzleloader and shotgun slug hunters praising the Bushnell Banner's durability (including current models). If and when I get an inline muzzleloader, that's probably the way I'll go.