Q: After reading what you wrote about the .25-06 I bought a Remington Model 700 in .25-06 and mounted it with a Meopta Meopro 4-12×50 scope in Leupold mounts. I also got 120 rounds of Remington ammo half loaded with the 100gn Core Lokt Pointed soft- point bullet for feral goats and pigs and half with the 115gn Core-Lokt Ultra Bonded for deer. I’d like your opinion of this outfit and the .25-06. Can you suggest a couple of good loads – one for long range varmints and one all around load for ferals and fallow deer?
Aubrey Longworth
A: The more I use the .25-06, one of the oldest wildcats in existnce, the more I think of it. Cartridge is simply the .30-06 case necked to .25 calibre with the same 17-degree, 30-minute shoulder angle retained. When I first tried it in the early 1950s, it wasn’t much better than the .25-303 simply because with the powders then available the cartridge was greatly overbore capacity, With the quicker burning of todays powders it’s still overbore capacity, but with the slow powders it really has some get up and go. The 100gn Core-Lokt PSP bullet leaves the muzzle at 3230 fps which for a bullet of that weight, sectional density and wind-bucking ability is a lot of velocity. The 115gn Core- Lokt Ultra-Bonded at 3000 fps is a good deer load. It’s still moving along at 2293 fps at 300 yds. and hits with 1342 ft/lb of energy. By comparison, the 100gn bullet has 2287 fps and 1161 ft/lbs left at 300. You can duplicate those velocities by loading 50gn of AR2209 behind a the 100gn Nosler Partition bullet for 3000fps while 48gn behind the 115gn Nosler Ballistic Tip gets 3000fps. A good flat-shooting varmint load uses the Hornady 75gn V-Max over 60gn of Supreme 780 for 3600fps. To my surprise accuracy was good with everything I fed into my rifle. Smallest groups ran about .75. Poorest group was under one-inch. In my experience, the 25-06 makes a superb long range feral and deer rifle. You’ve got a good outfit in that Model 700 and Meopta scope.
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