Is a belted case needed for this dual role?

Local friend of mine has just such a multi-purpose rifle.

We bed his new rifle in glass, and floated the barrel as the maker had put in about 100pounds forend tip pressure- which bent the barrel upwards. It took quite a bit of glass to replace the wood they had hogged out of the inlet.

It was a light weight Remington M700 Stainless laminated stocked rifle.

Through experimentation we found it liked both 165gr. Federal Fusion and 165gr. Federal TSX factory ammo, putting both into 1/2" or smaller (TSX's) 3-shot groups at 100 meters and both bullets into the same point of impact.

Due to the Federal Fusion's being less expensive than the TSX ammo, those are the ones he practiced with, most every weekend all summer, that he was able to get out before hunting season.

We had adjusted his Leupold 3-9X scope to put both load 2 1/2" high at 100 meters. His practice was at 100 to 230meters.

That fall - actually it was 2 falls ago, this friend shot a nice big trophy muley at a mere 125yards, the Stone Ram was just over 300yards and a nice Royal (6 point) BC Elk at 445yards - all animals dropping within 20 feet of bullet impact and all were shot with the TSX loads in his light weight, amazingly accurate Remington.30/06. He was tickled with the performance, of course.

Is a belted case necessary? Not if you can shoot an '06, it seems.