Evolving Names

Let’s look at some American military rounds that also became popular in sporting rifles. Sometimes it took a while for civilian headstamps to become uniform. Consider our government’s first .30 caliber cartridge. I have a Winchester round headstamped .30 Army, a Remington one saying .30 USA but today’s are marked .30-40 Krag.The .30-06 was treated likewise. It started out simply termed .30 US or .30 Government. Note: this is the bore size of rifles meant for it, not their groove diameters. When civilian rifle and ammunition makers adopted it, they also included the year it was introduced—1906. Early on, some commercial ammunition was headstamped; .30 G. Model 1906. So was the .25-06 introduced in 1906 also? No—it was simply the .30-06 case necked to take 0.257-inch diameter bullets.