25-06 with Varmint bullets
- Thread starter Vanderdootch
- Start date
I spotted for a buddy who shot a groundhog at 300 yds with Nosler 85 BT when they first came out , in a Ruger #1 25-06 and , watching the chuck through my scope, saw it simply explode. At ground zero , it looked like you took an atomizer bottle with blood a sprayed it around about a 6 ‘ circle. The most devastating shot I have seen , next to my 270 Weatherby .
Good on you, family always comes first, and they do appreciate it, "when they think about it."
Being interested in and enjoying firearms is a great pursuit. It's loaded with all sorts of political and personal histories of some great individuals.
IMHO, I've been luckier than most when it comes to firearms. It's lead to all sorts of other knowledge bases, such as machining, electronics, computers, physics, and even psychology. That's just the beginning of the spin offs.
Learning to shoot well is therapeutic on so many levels.
Reading about different types of firearms, applying real hands on experience to the study, enhances all sorts of skill sets, reading comprehension, hand to eye coordination, and teaching your brain to retain information you've read or found out on your own.
When I was still teaching young people to shoot, aged from 8-14, there were a lot of kids who had a lot of trouble concentrating on anything longer than a few minutes, before their attention would start wandering, often to fantasy scenarios.
Short attention spans are directly related to learning issues with people of all ages. Most of them are not "stupid" but, if the information isn't getting through the synapses routes to be stored, there isn't anything to retrieve when it's needed later.
A couple of the local teachers came to the shoots to see what was going on. Turned out, many of the kids started getting better at learning after they learned to shoot.
It was mostly because they learned to concentrate for longer periods, by coordinating hand to eye functions while aligning the sights on a target.
It wasn't a great improvement, but it made a big difference to many of the kids, especially those with left eye dominance and being right handed.
Too bad we couldn't get school systems to use shooting skills as a learning tool??????
Not willy nilly reloads but loads that are a known working accurate load...Will and should shoot accurate in any rifle that is put together right with quality components.
It's like this...If the rifle is built to the same standard as the match grade ammo it will shoot that ammo to a standard level of accuracy...Say sub MOA.
Now if you want to squeeze out sub half inch accuracy some amount of tinkering maybe called for.
This is how and why many rifle manufacturers can give accuracy guarantees on their products when used with factory ammo of known quality and precision.
Vanderdootch
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- Flamborough
Known accurate loads for your rifle are found by tinkering, this is because not all bullet/powder combinations will work in any given rifle/barrel.
Match grade rifles do not shoot all match grade ammo effectively (sub MOA) despite both the rifle and the ammunition being manufactured of quality components and tight tolerances. Sometime this can be case, but in my experience, it would certainly be the exception rather than the rule.
We went off on a tangent, had to stop and remember that this post was about 25/06 loads and here we are on another road all together. But are we…I see that you have taken us/me/we to a a very important parallel road that intertwines with all aspects of shooting and all matters that relate to it both physical and mental.
I had a boy that was ‘dumb’ in school, actually he was gifted but lazy because he could cruse through class with minimum effort. I took him to a Toronto Rocket Society event where 2 dozen rockets were launched. His eyes opened wide and then he got the speech about knowing chemistry to be able to formulate propellants, physics to understand flight and mathematics to calculate peak apogees and distances travelled. This ‘dummy’ went from last to the head of his class within the next 6 months. lol
Now he is a world class chef doing magic with food and spices, but I would trust him to reload some 257Rob for me in the future. And yes with Varget and Im happy with 3,000 ft/sec. Thank you for your insights Mr. Bearhunter. It’s not about just one thing but it’s about everything that contributes and counts….
For light varmint rounds you will probably be best served using a more temperature stable powder. If you are planning on using it in the summer and the winter. As others stated Varget, is a great powder for the 75 grain rounds, so is the new Staball Match powder. But they will start to lose ground after that bullet weight, as a bit slower powders will give you better speed, and case fill.
Sticking with the temperature stable powders, above 75 grain I would start burning H4350, 6.5 Staball, N555, and Reloder 16. At around a hundred grains is probably around where H4831 and Reloader 23 will start giving you the best performance, and the heavier to heaviest .257 caliber rounds, you can start burning some really slow powder.
You can use all those powders I listed with any grain weight in the 25-06 if you want. But you have to be a careful with Varget l, and Staball Match, in the heavier weights, as pressures will increase quickly, and the slower ones won't get the highest velocity or complete burn with the lower bullet weights.
If you don't care about temperature stability of the powder, then you have a much wider range of powders to choose from. Good luck.
Sticking with the temperature stable powders, above 75 grain I would start burning H4350, 6.5 Staball, N555, and Reloder 16. At around a hundred grains is probably around where H4831 and Reloader 23 will start giving you the best performance, and the heavier to heaviest .257 caliber rounds, you can start burning some really slow powder.
You can use all those powders I listed with any grain weight in the 25-06 if you want. But you have to be a careful with Varget l, and Staball Match, in the heavier weights, as pressures will increase quickly, and the slower ones won't get the highest velocity or complete burn with the lower bullet weights.
If you don't care about temperature stability of the powder, then you have a much wider range of powders to choose from. Good luck.
