Something new...

... except something old.

We wandered through a just-opened Scheel's over the weekend, and I left a few noseprints on the glass gun cases. The Winchester 1895 in particular caught my eye, although I was a bit puzzled when I looked at the hang tag and saw it labeled as "Caliber: .30-06".

I craned my neck around and the breech was marked ".30 GOV 03". I'd been expecting ".30 US", aka .30-40 Krag, and this was a new one on me.

I did some research on the phone real quick before I said something to a clerk about a mis-labelled hang tag, and learned...

.30-03 was a midpoint cartridge between the .30-40 Krag and .30-06 Springfield, with some features of both. The long and short of it, near as I can tell, is that it is safe to shoot .30-06 in a .30-03 chamber, but you may see some cracked case necks. What I could find also suggested sticking to the 180gr and heavier bullets, as the .30-03 was designed around the 220gr bullet of the .30-40 Krag and most have twist rates to match.

Nifty.