This jungle deer is probably America’s least-known big-game animal.

Photo above: The author’s big Yucatan gray-brown brocket was taken at Balam, state of Quintana-Roo in 2013. If you don’t know brockets, it doesn’t look like much, but a buck like this is equivalent to a monster whitetail. 

Just the other day I was in deer camp at Steinbeck Vineyards, during our August coastal deer season. On a blistering afternoon, we were killing some time and swapping stories, waiting for it to cool down a bit. One of the hunters, Kyle Welker, showed me a photo of a huge gray-brown brocket, one of the biggest I’ve seen. This is sort of equivalent to a 190-inch whitetail. Its antlers were thick, sharp spikes, clearly more than six inches long. Huge. We passed his phone around and half the folks in camp, all experienced hunters, had never heard of a brocket deer.

The brockets are small jungle deer, found in multiple species and races from southern Mexico down through Central America, on through the vast Amazon Basin to northern Argentina. Most of us consider “North America” to run north from the Panama Canal. Even by the stingiest definition, Canada, Mexico, and the United States are North American countries. So, Mexico’s brocket deer are bonafide North American game animals. Yet they get so little love that many hunters aren’t aware they exist.

 I first heard about brocket deer from gunwriting great and early deer hunting guru John Wootters, a patient and important mentor when I was a new editor. From Texas, Wootters did a lot of hunting in Mexico, tried several times to get a jaguar (when still legal). For sure, he’s the first person I knew who had taken a brocket deer.

I was fascinated, and I put brockets on my bucket list. I had my first chance in the 1980s, joining SCI leaders Andy Samuels and hunting legend Dr. Jim Conklin on a brocket hunt in Mexico’s Yucatan. It wasn’t a great hunt– the outfitter was a mess, little food, sleeping in hammocks under the stars. But there were plenty of brockets. I think we had five hunters in camp, and I was the only one who didn’t get a buck. That happens. In any camp, someone draws the neck of the chicken. I passed on females, never saw a buck. I now know that four of five was an astonishing success rate.

In those days, a brocket was a brocket. The brocket deer of southern Mexico are the least-studied and least-known North American big game animals. Local hunters talk about mountain and dwarf brockets, which may or may not exist as distinct races. Today, we know that, in southern Mexico, there are Yucatan gray-brown brockets (also called brown brockets), and red brockets.

Current taxonomic thinking places them in different genera: The smaller red brocket is Mazama americana; the more widespread brown (also called gray/brown) is Odocoileuspandora, thus of the same Odocoileus genus as whitetails and mule deer. I’m no scientist, but this makes sense; at first glance, a gray-brown brocket could be mistaken for a small first-year-spike whitetail. The red brocket is quite a different animal. Not just different in color and size, but differing in skull shape, pedicels, and antler curve.

The gray-brown seems happiest in less dense jungle and can be found in edge habitat close to agriculture. Slightly smaller, with sharp, straighter antlers, the red brocket is more a creature of the densest jungle and often found in hilly country. Their habitats overlap, but where they are found together it seems to me there might be ten brown brockets for every red brocket. Not that you will see ten brockets of either color. On a couple of week-long hunts, I might have seen a half-dozen gray-brown brockets. On others, in a week of hard hunting I never saw a single deer.

A brown brocket is one of the most difficult North American animals to hunt. The red brocket is several times more difficult. I made four dedicated hunts for a red brocket. The only one I’ve seen is the one I took in 2022.

On my first jungle hunt, “Dr. Jim” was bopping back toward “camp” near dusk and saw a nice buck drinking from a stream. He shot it, and it was clearly different from the brockets our friends had taken. Smaller, narrower skull, with straight antlers. In those days, even in the record books, a brocket was a brocket, but I’m convinced Dr. Jim shot a red brocket.

Seasonal color varies, all antlered animals vary in antler configuration, and size differential is small. So, what’s the difference between gray-browns and red? With this story, I am sharing perhaps the rarest hunting photo I have. Mexican friend and dedicated hunter Andres Santos took a nice gray-brown, and on the same day another hunter took a big red brocket. Andres had the presence of mind to put them together; in the only side-by-side photos of brown and red brockets I have ever seen. 

I did several more Yucatan hunts and took gray-browns. Typically, brockets are taken from machans in the jungle, using shotguns. One was on the edge of agriculture, taken with the outfitter’s rifle. Clean, sharp spikes are typical, but both species occasionally fork. That buck had a major fork in the lower third of the left antler.

A few years later, during a hot midday I was comfortable in a hammock, watching a waterhole, with Yucatan hunting legend Hector Arias. Hammocks are comfy and I was out like a light when he punched me. “Big brocket coming.”

I rolled out, crawled a few yards. I could see the legs, not the head, and then the buck stepped into view.  I almost emptied the Benelli, filled with No. 4 buckshot. It was a huge brocket, with big bases, antlers curving slightly inward. Kyle Welker’s buck looks bigger. Both are as rare as a 190-inch whitetail. And, like most big animals, it takes some luck. Right place, right time.

It’s tough hunting, usually hot and humid, but the jungle is so different from any other North American habitat. It’s not comfortable, and I hate stand hunting, but you never know what you might see. Agoutis, white-lipped peccaries, howler monkeys, tapirs in the rivers. A Kansas friend, Brad Oakes, joined me one spring. He was sitting over a waterhole and had a big jaguar in front of him at forty yards. I’ve seen tracks, never a jaguar, but I’d love to see one. I came to enjoy the Yucatan jungle.

The good news: It’s not an expensive hunt, and although it’s always best to concentrate on the main goal, there’s plenty of other game, and Yucatan is the only place for ocellated turkey. It’s unlikely I could ever take a bigger gray-brown, no interest in trying, but I decided I wanted a red brocket, probably the most difficult North American animal to hunt on purpose.

I spent a week at Balam in tall machans, red brockets on trail cams. Irregularly; they’re always irregular. Never saw a brocket, red or brown. My friend Rex Baker came up with his North American “Rex Baker Super 40,” including both gray-brown and red brocket. Rex didn’t have one either, so we were on parallel paths. And equally stubborn. Rex got his red a few days before I took mine.

In 2021, my friend Sergio Alcazar (ALC Global Adventures) suggested Mario Canales, operating in Yucatan. Most Yucatan hunting, for ocellated turkey and brown brocket, seems to be in late spring, April into May. The red brockets are on a different schedule, feeding when the amapola trees drop their flowers…in late March. As a tropical deer, some bucks (not that you will see a bunch) seem to be in hard antler throughout the year, but the majority seem to be in hard antler in spring.

I saw no brockets at all on our 2021 hunt, but Sergio got a very nice red brocket, antlers fully formed but not yet shed. Between the two of us, 50 percent success was awesome. Hector Arias was now working with Mario, and the two of them were seriously studying their red brockets. I tried again in March 2022.

Hector and I sat in tall machans for a couple days, saw nothing. Toward noon on the third day, we had a wind change, so we vamoosed for lunch and a siesta. I had just dropped off in my hammock when Hector shook me. “We go.”

I cannot know if it was luck or instinct. We climbed a steep ridge, crawled up into hammocks in a tall machan at about 2 pm, heat of the day. I was just getting comfortable when Hector nudged me and pointed. Good Gawd, the only red brocket I’ve ever seen pranced into the white amapola flowers littering the ground.

I shot him with the camp Mossberg, at maybe 25 yards, the entire No. 0 buck pattern striking his shoulder. Hunting with the next-door outfitter, Sergio got his red brocket on his first hunt, but in three tries hasn’t yet taken a brown. Rex and I were on our fourth attempts. I have no idea how many times Andres Santos has tried. He still doesn’t have a red brocket. As Jack O’Connor said of Coues whitetails, “Even where there are a lot of them, there aren’t very many of them.” 

There is no place where there are a lot of brocket deer. It’s not a physically demanding hunt like sheep, but I know of no North American animal more difficult. The brocket is a cool little deer that’s worth the effort. You just keep trying.

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These interesting African antelopes include the topi, tsessebe, blesbok, and bontebok.

Photo above: A group of bontebok in South Africa. Although blesbok also have white faces, they lack the bright white body markings of their close cousin, the bontebok.

The damalisc antelopes, genus Damaliscus, are close relatives to the hartebeests (genus Alcelaphus), with similar color and coat, preorbital glands at the inside corners of their eyes, and similar horns on both sexes. In short, a damalisc is almost a hartebeest—but not quite! The group includes topi, tsessebe, blesbok, and bontebok, all plains-dwelling herd antelopes. In terms of wariness, they may not be the sharpest knives in the antelope drawer, but there’s nothing wrong with their eyesight, and topis and tsessebes are among the most fleet-footed of African antelopes.

I always found it interesting that the record books list “damaliscs and hartebeests” together. Horns are a primary difference. Hartebeest horns grow from massive bases, then make abrupt turns, generally ending with rearward-pointing tips. The damaliscs are at least a third smaller, with round. ringed horns that grow in gentle curves.

Within genus Damaliscus, there are just two species: D. lunatus, topi, tiang, korrigum, and tsessebe; and D. pygargus, bontebok and blesbok. Whether in horn size or shape, or anything else, none are dramatic antelopes, none considered among Africa’s great prizes. No one has ever proposed a “grand slam of damaliscs!”

However, where they occur, damaliscs are an important part of the African scene. Sometimes they are common game, sometimes local rarities, depending on where you are. They and their hartebeest cousins are among the most widespread of African antelopes. The damaliscs are discontinuous, originally found from Senegal to Kenya, and from Ethiopia to the Cape, but only here and there.

Blesbok (“buck with the blaze,” referring to the white forehead stripe) are common across South Africa and, although non-native, widely found across Namibia. Although susceptible to predators, blesbok are prolific. On safaris in Southern Africa, most hunters will take a blesbok. Like common animals worldwide, big blesbok are rare. If your PH says, “I think you should shoot that blesbok,” you probably should.

Blesbok and bontebok are subspecies, and will interbreed freely, so they cannot run together else one race will vanish. Slightly smaller, with bright white underparts, the bontebok is distinct, and almost became extinct. Primary home range was in the Western Cape, on a collision path with the Voortrekkers. Deriving from Dutch, “bontebok” translates as “patchwork buck,” referencing the white markings. In the early twentieth century, only seventy pure bontebok remained. Seventeen were captured, and in 1931 Bontebok National Park was established near Swellendam, South Africa.

Compared to blesbok, the bontebok has always been a rarity. All bontebok alive today, in numerous private herds, descend from those saved in Bontebok NP. When I took mine, it was behind a low cattle fence. It wasn’t a tough hunt, but it was technically free range. Today, “certified” bontebok herds must be behind game fences to prevent interbreeding with blesbok. Just this year, the Weatherby Foundation removed bontebok from their award ballot because it is no longer possible to take one free-range.

The other damaliscs, tsessebe, topi, tiang, and korrigum, occur farther north, and all are spotty. The tsessebe (often spelled sassaby) is native to certain areas in northern Namibia, the Limpopo Valley, Botswana’s Okavango, Zambia’s Bangweulu, western Zimbabwe, and southwest Tanzania. Populations are often many miles apart. It seems unclear is this weird distribution is natural or caused over time by human influence. Either way, tsessebes are where you find them.

I shot my one and only tsessebe with Barrie Duckworth in 1979, near Bulawayo, one of the odd pockets where they occur. Since, I’ve seen them in Bangweulu, in the Okavango, and occasionally on game ranches in Namibia and South Africa. In 2007, Donna was with me on an elephant hunt in central Botswana with Johan Calitz. We got the elephant early, and Johan proposed we go to Maun, buy plains game licenses, and spend a few days at his Okavango camp. The Okavango was shifting to photographic safaris, so it was the last chance to hunt that beautiful area. 

Donna had come down with something and was really sick. We made it to camp and she crawled into bed and crashed. Next day, the last thing she wanted to do was hunt, but the licenses were in her name. A tough lady, she rallied and took what were probably the last red lechwe and tsessebe to be hunted in the Okavango. 

Topi and tiang are found in East Africa, well north of the nearest tsessebe. The two are visually indistinguishable. Both have a reddish coat with almost purple iridescence, in common with blesbok and bontebok. Although there is a small coastal population on the border between Kenya and Somalia, topi are primarily found in northwestern Tanzania, southwest Kenya, and on into southern Uganda. Considered common game where they occur, they are also spotty. On the upper Ugalla in 1993, Geoff Broom and I saw tracks, never an animal. They are also present in the Rungwa, but I never saw any.

The only topi I’ve ever seen were in Kigosi, western Tanzania, east of the more famous Moyowasi. There, they were plentiful, often seen in small herds on grassy plains. Hunting with Jaco Oosthuizen, I finally got a good topi. Again, there’s a major break, with the similar but slightly larger tiang primarily found in South Sudan’s East Equatoria, east of the Nile, tipping into northwest Kenya and northeast Uganda. They are also found—and huntable—in southwest Ethiopia. I never got down there, so I’ve never seen a tiang. I probably won’t ever see one, but there’s a lot of wildlife in East Equatoria. The tiang is just one of eight antelopes that have been hunted little, or not at all, since the last Sudan safaris in 1983. Maybe peace will break out in Sudan and such a safari can be possible.

There’s another almost-damalisc, or almost-hartebeest, that I’ve never seen. Only identified in 1887, the hirola occupies a small, isolated range in northeast Kenya and Somalia. They were long called Hunter’s antelope or Hunter’s hartebeest, after HCV Hunter, who collected the first specimen. Long lumped in with the damaliscs, the hirola has more recently been ascribed to its own unique genus and species, Beatragus hunteri.  Lighter in color and smaller-bodied than topi or tiang, the hirola has lyre-shaped horns like impala, but thicker with more abrupt turns. Sadly, the hirola has been extirpated in Somalia and the current Kenya population is believed to number as few as 300. Although long protected, the hirola lives in a rough neighborhood and there is no zoo population. Critically endangered, the hirola could be the first African animal to become extinct in modern times.

There is one more damalisc that I have seen and hunted. Although it is similar to topi and tiang in appearance, the korrigum is slightly larger in both body and horn. Because of this, it’s often called “giant topi,” sharing the purple coloration of its cousins, but with dark legs instead of the tan limbs of topi and tiang. It once occupied a huge range across the Sahel, from Senegal to Chad. Old-timers (even older than me) told me of vast herds of korrigum in 1970s in the giant eland country between Chad and CAR.

Recent decline has been severe. Korrigum are gone from much former range and there are no vast herds. There are isolated populations in various national parks, with the largest numbers probably in Pendjari NP in Benin, and in Waza NP in northern Cameroon. Korrigum are on license in some adjacent hunting blocks in northern Cameroon, which is almost the only place to hunt korrigum right now.

At the turn of the millennium, when the late Alain Lefol was hunting Chad, korrigum were on license and a number were taken. Although Chad is open again, as I understand it, korrigum are either not on license or not present in the areas currently hunted. In 2000, Chris Kinsey and I hunted in Chad with Alain Lefol. It was a wonderful free-wheeling safari across 500 miles of Chad, from the Ennedi Mountains near Libya, down through Dar Sila, to the CAR border. There, along the Aoukale River, out of food, low on water, with just enough fuel to get back to Ndjamena, we found korrigum. Chris got a big bull, and mine was big enough. I’m glad I had the opportunity. 

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Ursus arctos is one of the most impressive big-game animals in the world.

Photo above: Guides and hunters in a Mountain Monarchs of Alaska fly camp in May 2024: Boddington, guide Dave Dye, guide Pete Mayall, hunter Matt Balise. Matt’s bear, on the right, is the largest, squaring well over 10 feet.

What’s the greatest game animal in the Northern Hemisphere? For some, it’s a big elk, for others a moose. You’ll get no argument from me if you pick a wild ram. What about the big bears, the world’s largest carnivores–North America’s only truly dangerous game?

The brown/grizzly bear ranges (today discontinuously) from the Pyrenees of France and Spain east across Eurasia, across what was once the Siberian land bridge to North America, down the western mountains. Almost within living memory, it lived as far south as Mexico’s Sierra Madre, and as far east as Hudson Bay. Across this huge range, the brown/grizzly is the same bear, Ursus arctos.

Out of human compulsion, we separate the brown/grizzly bears into regional groupings. The biggest brown/grizzly bears are the bears of coastal Alaska and, across the Bering Sea, on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula. These bears get big because of their high-protein salmon diet in the fall and their shorter hibernation period because of the warm currents from Japan. Although data is sparse, it wouldn’t surprise me if the brown bears from Japan’s northern islands were biggest of all.

As a bucket-list item, many hunters want one big bear. Doesn’t matter if it’s brown or grizzly, just so it’s big. I shot my first grizzly in 1974, in British Columbia. Youngster that I was, I was ecstatic. Although a boar, it wasn’t big.

In 1981 I was the fledgling Editor of Petersen’s HUNTING, and I had a chance to hunt brown bear with the legendary Don Johnson out of Cold Bay, near the bottom of the Alaska Peninsula. On the first day, we saw a bear at great distance. Guide Michael Joe “Slim” Gale insisted it was a big bear. He was right, and we got the bear. Hours later, we got the skin down to a sandbar where Don might be able to land a Supercub. On that sandbar, we laid out the skin, no stretching, for the “Alaskan “square”: 10 feet 8 inches by 11 feet 2 inches. By any measurement, it was a ten-foot bear. With only slight exaggeration, it could be called an 11-footer. The story I wrote was titled “Giants Still Walk.”

One colleague called me a liar. Another wrote that such bears don’t exist. Yes, they do, but they are rare and you need luck, which I had in October 1981. I have always known I can never beat that bear. Problem is, an encounter with a big bear is such a special experience that I haven’t been able to call it quits.

I did several hunts in southeast Alaska with my old friend Jim Keeline. We never got a brown bear, but that was my fault: I flubbed a shot at a fine bear. It also took me several tries to get a big grizzly in Arctic Alaska; my timing was always too early or too late. Hunting with Dave Leonard, I caught it right on the third try and took a wonderful bear.

I got lucky again in the spring of 1992. At Ronald Reagan’s suggestion, Gorbachev tore down the wall. The world changed, and Russia’s great hunting became available. The Hunting Consortium’s Bob Kern was among the first in, and Joe Bishop and I headed to Kamchatka. At first, it didn’t feel lucky. We hit Petropavlovsk at the same time as a spring blizzard, so no bears were out.

Our outfitter had a TBD, the logistics variant of Russia’s famous BMP armored vehicle. He was proud of it, so I asked how he’d gotten it. Six months earlier, when the Soviet Union dissolved, a Russian colonel wanted a bear rug to take home to his wife in Moscow. They’d made a trade. At the time, I was a lieutenant colonel, commanding an infantry battalion. I had a good laugh pondering what would happen to me if I traded a Hummer for a bearskin.

We clanked through the snowy woods in our tank, then did some hunting on snowmobiles and on cross-country skis. Joe Bishop, from Colorado, was an accomplished skier. Me, well, I’d never been on cross-country skis. I took a lot of spills and kept Joe laughing with creative Marine swearing.

It warmed up quickly. The white stuff receded, I fell down less, and the bears came out. Joe and I both took dandies, Joe’s a big light-colored boar, mine a dark, burly brute with a head like a bucket. Kamchatka Peninsula has the world’s densest population of brown/grizzly bears, with estimates varying from 10,000 to more than 27,000. After skinning my bear, Bob Kern and I laid the skin out flat on clean snow. Although it was a big bear, the best we could get out of it for the “Alaskan square” was 9½ feet. By skull measurement, though, it was the SCI world record for several years. It has now slipped to 24^th place in that listing.

At their very best, I think Alaska produces bigger bears. That’s especially true in the famous areas: lower Alaska Peninsula, Kodiak, Unimak. On my wife, Donna’s, one-and-only brown bear hunt, she took an honest ten-foot bear on the first day, hunting with Alisha “Mutts” Rosenbruch-Decker on the bottom end of Admiralty Island. Hers was Glacier Guides’ largest bear that season.

Since the early 1990s, Kamchatka’s brown bears have offered a sound alternative. While Alaska can produce larger bears, even in the most famous places, not every hunter gets a ten-footer. And the average bear in Kamchatka beats the Alaskan average. We all like to talk about exceptional animals, but a nine-foot bear is a big bear. Anyone who passes such a bear, first day or last, is making a mistake. The Alaskan average is smaller, the Kamchatka average about there.

Overall success is higher in Kamchatka, enabled by the large bear population and snowmobile mobility through most of the spring season. Brown bear hunts in Kamchatka are less costly than Alaska, with a second bear allowed.  For thirty years, I suggested to hunters in search of a big brown bear that they consider Kamchatka. 

Then the tanks rolled into Ukraine. I had a hunt in Russia planned when the war started. Some hunters went, although in smaller numbers. At the conventions this year, I was delighted when Bob Kern told me he was resuming operations in Russia. His Kamchatka bear hunts have just concluded, and they had a great season with some great bears taken, no problems with permits or firearms importation. Camps, equipment, food, conditions have been significantly upgraded since Joe and I did that early hunt. A retired military man like me, Kern is careful and I’ve trusted him for forty-some years. There’s some hunting I’d still like to do in Russia. I’m making plans, but maybe not for a big bear. I might have scratched that itch for the last time.

In October 2023, I decided I must have one more encounter with a big bear. I went to old friend Dave Leonard’s area, Mountain Monarchs of Alaska, at the tip of the Alaska Peninsula, hunting in Izembek Wildlife Refuge around the volcanoes, an area famous for monster bears. I saw the biggest, most beautiful bear I’ve ever seen and stalked him three times. By the time we got there, he’d vanished. Then fierce Aleutian weather closed in, sending us back to our tents. The Peninsula brown bear season is “odd-number falls” and “even-number springs.” I could have waited until fall ’25, or I could try again in spring ’24. Since I no longer buy green bananas, I went back six months later.

The weather was kinder and the bears were out. I took a gorgeous, no-brainer boar 24 hours after I landed in spike camp. Twenty-four hours later, my camp-mate, Matt Balise, took an even bigger bear. Mine was under ten feet, his well over. 

Alaska produces the biggest bears, and the known “big bear areas” produce most of the giants. Accept as reality: It’s tough hunting, success not given. So, if you want a big brown bear, Alaska and Kamchatka are your primary choices. I doubt I’ll get that itch again. If I do, I’m curious to see how Kamchatka has changed since 1992.

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You can never go wrong carrying this classic caliber.

Photo above: This big Texas whitetail was taken with a new Ruger Glenfield in .30-06 loaded with 180-grain Swift A-Frame bullets.

It was the last day of the Texas deer season, deep into the last (and best) hour. Movement in the trees. Heavy body, thick neck. Before I could see antlers, I knew this was an older buck. When he stepped clear I saw good mass and width—a big, mature eight-pointer.

He stood quartering to me, head down. I put the cross hairs on the point of the on-shoulder and pressed the trigger. The buck was down so fast he almost appeared to bounce. Well, the presentation was good, shot placed where I wanted. And I hit him with a powerful rifle, a .30-06.

America’s military cartridge through both World Wars, Korea, and countless smaller actions, the .30-06 was also America’s most popular sporting cartridge for most of the twentieth century. Still common, still effective, but against successive blizzards of brave new cartridges, the .30-06 is often overlooked. It’s been years since I’ve had a new test rifle in .30-06 in my hands. This rifle was Ruger’s new Glenfield, a plain-Jane bolt-action. On the range, it grouped far better than an inexpensive rifle really should. In the field, it pounded that buck.

That’s what the .30-06 will do. I have often said that the .30-06 is needlessly powerful for deer-size game. But it works. Against all those sexy new cartridges, the .30-06 has stood the test of time and stands up very well.

I’ve written this before, but it bears repeating: The .30-06 is the most powerful cartridge ever adopted by a major military. As a sporting cartridge, it comes into its own as an elk cartridge and remains, in my opinion, the most ideal choice for African plains game. Not as much recoil as a magnum, yet devastating efficiency on the wide range of antelopes, small to large.

 Although old, it is not slow. Today, the most common loads are a 150-grain bullet at a speedy 2,910 fps; 165 grains at 2,800; and 180 grains at 2,700. Note this last: That’s the same velocity as the vaunted 6.5 Creedmoor with a 140-grain bullet. Sure, the ’06 kicks more, but with more frontal area and bullet weight, there isn’t much you can’t do with a .30-06 and a 180-grain bullet. If you want more, the old standard for the largest game was a 220-grain bullet at a credible 2,500 fps. Despite variance in velocity and bullet weight, all four loads produce close to 3,000 ft-lbs, a lot of energy.

As the .375 H&H is on larger game, the .30-06 is the jack-of-all-trades for medium game. Even Jack O’Connor, patron saint of the .270, conceded in letters (never in print) that the .30-06 was more versatile. In the 1950s, Grancel Fitz was the first person known to take all species of North American big game. Fitz used one rifle, a Griffin & Howe Springfield in .30-06. A generation later, Dr. J.Y. Jones accomplished the same feat, using only his battered Remington .30-06. “North American big game” includes four sheep and a goat, plus Alaskan brown, grizzly, and polar bear. And bison and walrus, both very large.

The .30-06 made its bones in Africa on the 1909 Roosevelt safari, both Kermit and his dad, Theodore, taking prodigious quantities of game, small to large, with 220-grain bullets. In 1933 Ernest Hemingway relied on his Griffin & Howe Springfield because he hated the heavy trigger on his .470 double. He took black rhino, buffalo, lion, plains game.  On his first safari, Robert Ruark relied on a Remington .30-06 for his plains game. Jack O’Connor’s wife, Eleanor, was mostly a 7×57 fan. Eleanor considered the .30-06 a cannon, stepping up to it (with 220-grain bullets) only for extra-large game, including elephant and tiger.

Because of that history and lineage, when I was planning my first African hunt, I decided I had to have a .30-06. To this day, I have never taken a big bear, buffalo, or pachyderm with a .30-06, and few sheep or goats. Across that broad spectrum, I think there are better tools. Instead, I’ve used several .30-06 rifles for all manner of deer, elk, and a pile of plains game. 

In 1976, I went to the Camp Pendleton PX and bought a Ruger M77 in .30-06 and a Redfield 3-9X scope. On my first safari, at first, I shot poorly. Young, excited, trying too hard. As Harry Selby told Robert Ruark, “Everybody misses at first. It’s the light.” I suppose he was right. (There isn’t good shooting light when you have your head up your —.) I got past the jitters, shot well in the second camp down on the Tsavo plains. Antelopes small and large, near and far. I came to appreciate the .30-06. For the next few years I used little else. Blacktails, whitetails, mule deer, Coues deer, couple more African hunts. Then that rifle was stolen. 

In the aftermath, I switched to left-hand bolt rifles, including a beautiful left-hand M700 .30-06 from the Remington Custom Shop. That rifle went to several continents, accounted for a lot of animals. Later, I had a wonderful Jarrett .30-06 on a left-hand Remington receiver, wonderfully accurate. In the early 2000s I was doing an Africa-based outdoor television show, Ruger as one of the sponsors. I went back to the beginning and bought a Ruger M77, this one in left-hand bolt.

When Donna got interested in hunting, I shaved a bit off the butt and reset the recoil pad. Oh, boy, that rifle has taken a lot of African game. Some people are less sensitive to recoil than others. Generations of recruits complained about getting beat up by their Springfields and Garands. If Donna thought that Ruger was a cannon, she never mentioned it, and she shot it well. That said, the .30-06 is powerful and it kicks. I wouldn’t start a youngster with a .30-06, nor is it a wise choice for people who admit they don’t like recoil. When she got her own rifle, I switched her to a .270 and she hasn’t looked back. The switch was for flatter trajectory and lighter rifle, not for less recoil. Ready to go, that .30-06 weighs 8.5 pounds and produces 22 ft-lbs of recoil. Donna’s .270 is a super-light MGA, six pounds loaded and ready. Gun weight matters; her .270 produces more recoil than the .30-06.

Over the years, I’ve gone up and down the bullet scale. That first Ruger really liked 180-grain Nosler Partitions, loaded as fast as I could get them. The Remington shot its best groups with 165-grain bullets. A little faster and flatter-shooting, and on game up to elk, I never saw any difference in performance. The Jarrett shot everything well but really liked a 150-grain Barnes X loaded fast. Once, hunting whitetails in Saskatchewan, I spotted a buck cruising an open snow field behind my stand. No time to range him, so I held on the backline and dropped it into the boiler room. With our current Ruger, I went back to 180-grain bullets, shooting mostly plain old Hornady Interlocks at the standard 2,700 fps. The .30-06 isn’t slow, but at its moderate velocity, good bullet performance is routine. Same lesson that first Ruger taught me 50 years ago: There isn’t much you can’t do with a .30-06 and a 180-grain bullet.

As America’s most common cartridge, for many years a new test rifle was likely to be a .30-06. I have no idea how many came and went. Some grouped spectacularly, others not so well, but always good enough. The Ruger Glenfield I used on that Texas buck is the first .30-06 test rifle I’ve seen in a while, which suggests the great old .30-06 is being overlooked in the snowdrifts of newer cartridges.

Let’s finish by remembering where the .30-06 nomenclature came from. One of the fun things I do is teach some classes at daughter Brittany’s She Hunts skills camps for women. In “Bullet Basics” I try to make some sense of our nonsensical morass of cartridge nomenclature. .308 Winchester is clear, .308-inch bullet, introduced by Winchester. .257 Weatherby Magnum, fine. .257-inch bullet, designed by Weatherby, modified by “magnum,” from French for an extra-large bottle of champagne (the ladies love that). Then we have rounded numbers, reversion to blackpowder convention (.30-30, .45-70). And now whimsical names and alphabet soup: Creedmoor, Legend, ARC, PRC. It’s nearly impossible for anyone who didn’t start reading gun magazines in grade school to sort it all out. 

The grand old .30-06 is perhaps the most notable. No one ever accused the US military of simple nomenclature. Officially, the new cartridge we adopted in 1906 was: “Cartridge, ball, caliber .30, Model of 1906.” It was soon and forever shortened to “Thirty-aught-six.”

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