Light vs heavy grain bulllets and barrel wear

[Armed-Citizen]

Haven?t gone hunting in a while but I bought a 30-06 new rifle for hunting. Looking at 150/165/180 grain ammo, is there a chance barrel wear is greater if I just feed it one type of grain?
(Would going 180gr only cause more barrel wear vs going only with 150 or 165 for the life of the rifle?)

[TrailerparkTrash]

No. Not slamming you in the least, but from the looks of your question, I’m guessing you don’t have much vast experience with rifles in general. So I tend to believe that you in your lifetime will never wear out a new .30-06 barrel.

Shoot it and enjoy it with whatever bullet weight your rifle zeros best with.

[joe_gman]

Velocity and pressure kills barrels. A smaller lighter grain bullet pushed at higher pressures would cause more throat erosion and barrel wear than a slower heavier grain bullet. Unless you are shooting thousand plus rounds a year out of your hunting rifle, its hard to wear out a barrel in one lifetime.

[Armed-Citizen]

No. Not slamming you in the least, but from the looks of your question, I?m guessing you don?t have much vast experience with rifles in general. So I tend to believe that you in your lifetime will never wear out a new .30-06 barrel.

Shoot it and enjoy it with whatever bullet weight your rifle zeros best with.

Never got into the technical side of selecting ammo for hunting, but have to start somewhere.
Was trying to look at this from a performance point of view.

[ohsmily]

Haven?t gone hunting in a while but I bought a 30-06 new rifle for hunting. Looking at 150/165/180 grain ammo, is there a chance barrel wear is greater if I just feed it one type of grain?
(Would going 180gr only cause more barrel wear vs going only with 150 or 165 for the life of the rifle?)

Given your question, I want to make sure you know grain is a unit of measurement of weight. Grain isn't grit. When your write "light or heavy grain bullets", it's like saying light or heavy pound bricks....it's redundant.

As another poster mentioned, higher pressure/heat wears barrels faster. 'Barrel burner' rounds tend to be extreme velocity light to midweight bullets for the caliber. Varying the weights of bullets you shoot, as you suggested, has zero benefit per se.

Finally, your barrel will last at least several thousand rounds and likely a lot more than that if it is in a standard caliber and you're not pushing hot loads. Are you going to shoot 4000 rounds through your hunting rifle EVER? Put this topic out of your mind. I'm going to put this thread out of mine.

[Imageview]

130s or 110s pushed super hard will wear a barrel more quickly than 180s. But if you aren't handloading and using commercial ammo it's no big deal. And even then it would be thousands of rounds.

[Armed-Citizen]

Given your question, I want to make sure you know grain is a unit of measurement of weight. Grain isn't grit. When your write "light or heavy grain bullets", it's like saying light or heavy pound bricks....it's redundant.

As another poster mentioned, higher pressure/heat wears barrels faster. 'Barrel burner' rounds tend to be extreme velocity light to midweight bullets for the caliber. Varying the weights of bullets you shoot, as you suggested, has zero benefit per se.

Finally, your barrel will last at least several thousand rounds and likely a lot more than that if it is in a standard caliber and you're not pushing hot loads. Are you going to shoot 4000 rounds through your hunting rifle EVER? Put this topic out of your mind. I'm going to put this thread out of mine.

Thank you for the detailed response. I?m just trying to learn a bit more that?s all.

[rg_1111@yahoo.com]

Your shoulder will wear out before the barrel will. How much do you think you can shoot?
Well maybe with a muzzel brake.

[TrailerparkTrash]

Are you going to shoot 4000 rounds through your hunting rifle EVER? Put this topic out of your mind. I'm going to put this thread out of mine.

OMGoodness, now that was funny. Gonna have to borrow that line some day.

[ARDude]

OP, other than leaving your firearm out in the rain, and causing rust. Erosion in the barrel is caused by a regular diet of "hot" loads.

Just stick with any grain you like, but stay away from the hot loads.

[IVC]

Another point... Barrels are consumables on high-volume shooting rifles (which hunting rifles aren't), so even if you run into any "worn barrel" issue (which you almost certainly won't), it's easy and cheap to replace.

Don't limit or worry yourself by using a rifle in the way it's supposed to be used - by shooting it.

[hermosabeach]

You might notice groups starting to open up somewhere between 2400 rounds and 3500 rounds assuming slower rates of fire.

[Armed-Citizen]

Thank you everyone who answered, the hunting rifle in question was a sako arctos. Sako discontinued it so I was curios about this topic.

[pacmule]

If you are hunting here in CA, you must shoot copper bullets to hunt. It is usually recommended to go lighter in weight with copper, so you probably want 130-150gr bullets.

[splithoof]

If you are hunting here in CA, you must shoot copper bullets to hunt. It is usually recommended to go lighter in weight with copper, so you probably want 130-150gr bullets.

For .30 I have had excellent results with Barnes 168s. A decent .30-06 will shoot them very well, and they are GTG for any game in California. The OP will likely never shoot enough to even start to wear the barrel.
130s IMO are too light for the larger animals.