I am looking for a light recoiling load for my wife. I just aquired a marlin 336 for her to hunt with this year. This will be the first year she will be deer hunting with a rifle. Any suggestions?

jd My brother thought he wanted to play around with 130 gr bullets in his 308 for deer. We used the 130 gr Hornady but I doubt the Speer would be much different. Bullet made a mess and damaged lots of meat.Decided we wouldn't try that again.I have an old Sav 99 in 30-30 with a rotary magazine so we decided to try it with the 130's.Shot a couple deer with that combination (broadside lung shots)and the wound channel was very similar to what you would expect with a 270 and 130 gr bullets. In a rifle with a tube magazine you would be restricted to a 2 shot rifle. One in the barrel & one in the magazine.(no pointed bullet contacting the primer on the round ahead of it in the magazine).

I've loaded the 130g Speer flat point for one of my sons. It worked great for pronghorn and Muleys. The recoil is in fact somewhat less than with the 150g and we found it to work perfectly. It flattens out the trajectory of the little 30-30 just a little too, another bonus. Our use of the cartridge/bullet combination proved it is fine and capable game getter. The 130g Speer is a flat point bullet and no problems at all with a tubular magazine. This is one of the animals taken with the combination in a Marlin Lever gun also.

The Speer 130g bullet is a good one for the 30-30. I load it for a friend to use in his Winchester, and he loves it. I have had the best results using H335 powder. Good luck.

I put together a light load with Speer's 130 grain flat point and 30 grains of 3031 for the same reason you are looking for a load and it works perfectly where I hunt. At ranges of less than 100 yards it takes small Texas Whitetails with authority and shows pretty good penetration. I can't say about longer ranges because even a hundred yards is practically beanfield distance in east Texas. This marlin I have is amazingly accurate for a 30-30 with this load.