Early 30-30 Literature - When Did People Start Hunting With It and When Did We Start Calling It .30-30

 I wanted to find old publications and magazine articles talking about .30-30 from around when the cartridge came out in 1895. While doing this, I started to wonder when did we start calling the cartridge .30-30 from its original name. 

The earliest naming of .30-30 I initially found was in Shooting and Fishing (early American Rifleman) magazine from April 1901 where the author of the piece, I think a Mr. Venada, chastises a previous author, B. C. Morse, about .30 cal cartridges. Mr. Morse said .30 cal is insufficient while Mr. Venada says .30-30 works just fine on deer. People arguing about the usefulness of cartridges for deer? Some things never change. That said, there are earlier publications as S&F started in 1885 under a different name then changed in 1888. There should be an article somewhere between 1895 when Winchester releases .30 WCF and our 1901 article. Since I hadn't been able to find anything for that magazine before 1901, I looked elsewhere.

Eventually I found a magazine called Forest and Stream. The available volumes went back long before 1895 so I started pouring over those volumes.

To help narrow down my search, I looked for what month Winchester released .30-30. According to Leverguns.com, the Winchester catalog has it available for August of 1895. I first came across a column in Forest and Steam from 1896 in September written by none other than Teddy Roosevelt himself about the .30-30. He used the nomenclature of .30-30-160 to denote the exceptional capabilities of the new cartridge. It's very interesting to see that as early as 1896, Winchester's .30 Winchester Smokeless was being called .30-30. I still wasn't satisfied but was very exited to see something from the President.

Teddy Roosevelt's submission to Forest and Stream in 1896.

Next up, I went back to the F&S June to December volume for 1895 and reran searches for Winchester in case I had missed something. Indeed I had. I found a small piece about the new loadings in the Winchester catalog. The same catalog number 55 LeverGuns references. .30 Winchester Smokeless. Interestingly, the old 6mm Navy cartridge is also listed. 

At this point, it's safe to say that as soon as 1896, the cartridge is being called .30-30.

Forest and Stream 1895 second volume.

I continued to do additional digging and found the Recreation Magazine from September 1895 and found an advertisement. Very cool. I am disappointed that I have not found a 1896 scan of Recreation. 

All in all, this turned out to be a very fun exercise. I think it's pretty funny to find that people started calling this beloved cartridge .30-30 pretty much immediately. 

The links are below.

Forest and Steam - page 147 under The 30-Caliber on Game by Teddy Roosevelt.

https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/180080#page/257/mode/1up

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015006947264&seq=259&q1=roosevelt

Shooting and Fishing 1901

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924089863199&seq=25

LeverGuns.com History of the .30-30

https://www.leverguns.com/articles/3030history.htm

https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/serials.html