I used to be a .308 fan. It sure can reach out. It can even be used on elk. I never did. It can take shots out to 600m. I never did. It can use a lot of different ammo. I never did, it was just a deer gun, I loaded it with the closest thing to 168 HPBT I could get.
I used to think it was the most versatile cartridge I could have picked, then just used it one way for years. And it was heavy to carry, with enough recoil to think about it. Then I bought a bolt gun in .30-06, scoped. It was lighter, even harder shooting, and not easy to pick up game close in on the lowest setting. Then I tried a .30-30 lever. It was very easy to carry, still had recoil, still required manual action to reload, and I've only got irons on it because it uses a side mounted scope.
For a hunter, a light weight gun with little recoil and semi automatic action really does well. Adding a red dot, which I used on the first gun, works well with the majority of shots a deer hunter gets. What doesn't work well for me is .30 bullets. Stepping down in caliber is no sin, it allows matching the ballistics to the actual ranges used and the power level needed. There's no wasted excess that forces two more pounds of gun to be used.
That's why I'm moving on to the AR in 6.8. Not trying to hijack, just another step in the direction to accumulate all the things I liked about each previous gun into one easy to carry, use, shoot, and move gun that still had the power to knock down a deer, not me. Which is the exact reason intermediate caliber weapons like that were invented. It boils down to the bigger picture, not which .30, but Why? at all.