When I left school I bought a .30-06 and also joined a deer hunting club.

At the deer hunting clubs annual target shoot, I was interested to note, only one other participant had a .30 calibre rifle. There were a lot of .270's, .243's some other less than .30 calibre rifles. Nothing over .30.

Most of the hunting was fallow deer, and of course goats and pigs. Many hunters did make trips to Victoria to hunt sambar deer. The .270 is legal and adequate for this.

Nowadays my guess there would be few if any .270's. Lots of .30's and a number of greater than .30 rifles represented. Probably few if any .243's.

Have these lesser calibre cartridges stopped being able to kill beasts? No. What has changed? Fashion and hype. Hype to sell new stuff. Fashion to use newer and "better" rounds.

My original choice of the .30-06 was because I wanted one cartridge able to be used for any and all medium game hunting anywhere in the world.

Same reason I went to the slightly more powerful 8x68S. This was partialy due to my shots with the .30-06 failing with some beasts in Africa. With hindsight it was probably more due to the particular projectile failing to perform and more likely the batch of the projectiles was defective. But it is good to have some extra oomph when trophy hunting and not just meat hunting.

BTW same reason I went to the .375 H&H Magnum, a cartridge which can handle any beast anywhere oin the world.

Both the .30-06 and .375 H&H Mag are also common. Not a defect, but a positive if ammo ever needs to be sourced.

So a but off topic. But a .270, which could kill well in the 1980's can still kill today.

Same as a .30-06, which also has only a slightly lesser trajectory.

But not fashionable or trendy!