Back when I was much younger, factory ammunition more often than not left something to be desired when it came to accuracy.

Col. Townsend Whelen’s famous remark: “Only accurate rifles are interesting” is as true today as it was back then. In those days, very few rifles digested factory fodder accurately — if you wanted your rifle to shoot its best and be truly competitive, handloading your own ammunition was the only viable option.

However, today’s factory ammunition has vastly improved and accuracy of an inch or even better is not uncommon. The price has soared for sure, but modern, off-the-shelf ammo is dependable and accurate.

Paralleling the improvement in powder, case, primer and loading techniques is bullet development. Today’s bullets are manufactured to extremely tight tolerances and hunting bullets are currently designed to hold together and penetrate deeply. No longer do lead cores separate from their jackets, fly to pieces or fail to exit game. Soldering bullet cores to their jackets, enhanced lead composites, plastic tips to improve accuracy and initiate expansion as well as aerodynamically, ballistic friendly, bullet profiles testify to the effort and research invested in modern bullet design and the revolutionary all copper projectiles have opened other intriguing possibilities.

The Barnes TTSX all-copper bullet was a great choice for my purposes. (Wade Robertson)

Such developments might lead one to suppose there is no longer any need for hunters to take the time, effort and expense to handload their own ammunition. However, with the greater diversity of components available today there is still plenty of opportunity to craft your own loads to meet your own specific requirements or fill a void in the current ammunition available.

Hunters come in all shapes, sizes and sex. Since hunters vary widely, not only in stature but tolerance to recoil, the animals they may be pursuing and the ranges involved it’s difficult to address every need. But time has shown us that, overall, for big game up to and including moose and elk, one caliber is considered the most popular of all time and still is running strong: the venerable .30-06.

The 06 has a lot going for it, then and now. Tolerable recoil, a very wide range of bullets for target, plinking or hunting and easily available ammunition anywhere in the world are just a few of the reasons the .30-06 is leading the pack.

Naturally, I own a .30-06 myself and have taken moose, caribou, whitetails and mule deer with it, from close up to beyond 400 yards. But a few years back I found myself wondering if, with all the modern innovations, it might be possible to increase even the .30-06’s performance.

Ever since I can remember handloading has been a family passion. Dad and I would work in his room reloading rifle, pistol and shotgun shells. Dad stressed safety to a high degree. The casings were carefully counted and put in a shell block. Next a matching number primers were counted out and placed in a glass ashtray used especially for this purpose, finally individual bullets calculated.

After checking the manual the exact powder charges were weighed after which we visually inspected each case to make sure the level was identical. This was critical in small pistol cases where it would be easy to double charge a case with dangerous results. I found one or 2 early on and was highly praised for my discovery.

In hindsight Dad probably double charged those cases on purpose to impress upon me the importance of double checking every step.

So, it was with renewed delight I once again threw myself into the task of researching the newest powders and bullets available. This took some time and in fact was somewhat confusing so many were the choices. But after much research and many conversations with fellow handloaders I decided what my goal would be: reduced recoil with great penetration and higher velocity.

At first these may appear contradictory but, fortunately, they’re not. The first choice would be the bullet — after all, that’s what gets the job done. To increase velocity and lower recoil it would be necessary to shoot a lighter bullet. Was there a bullet out there that would meet these parameters and still perform well on game? There was!

After a fairly exhaustive search I was intrigued by the Barnes TTSX, all copper hollow point boat tail. It was long, sleek and sexy looking with a sharp plastic tip.

With an excellent sectional density and ballistic coefficient rivaling or exceeding that of a standard 150-grain lead bullet the numbers were all in its favor.

The Barnes reloading manual revealed 11 different powders would push that bullet over 3,200 fps and one, Winchester 748, managed 3,308 fps. That’s smoking hot! I had on hand one of these, Winchester 760 ball powder, which scaled very accurately through my powder measure. After some experimentation I settled on 63.5 grains of powder, the 130-grain TTSX bullet, RP brass and a standard Winchester large rifle primer which delivered half inch groups at 100 yards.

Fast forward to South Africa. I settled on the shooting sticks, 174 yards away through the thorn bush stood a tall-horned blesbox. The crosshairs wavered, settled and my rifle roared. The blesbox dropped at the shot, as did four other African animals during my trip.

My guide, Vihan, smiled at these results. “What are you shooting?” he inquired.

“A very special handload of mine,” I replied, grinning.