In praise of .25-caliber bullets

Author Dave Workman’s bolt-action .257 Roberts, built on a Mauser ’98 action with a Douglas barrel and Weaver scope. It’s one of the reliable .25s, calibers that are often overlooked but never fail to do

the job. (DAVE WORKMAN)

NEVER OVERLOOK OR UNDERESTIMATE THE .25’S 6.5MM CREEDMOOR, ETC., ARE ALL THE RAGE, BUT THIS OLD CALIBER STILL GETS THE JOB DONE ON DEER, GOATS, SHEEP – EVEN CARIBOU

BY DAVE WORKMAN

In the shooting and hunting world, we’ve seen cartridges come and go with regularity; sizzling-hot one day and overshadowed by the newer whizbang development the next day.

But there is a family of cartridges that has literally covered all the bases, and the common denominator is that they all launch .257-caliber bullets. They are as reliable today as they were in their heydays, and among them are cartridges capable of bringing down coastal blacktails and mountain goats, sheep and mule deer, and even caribou and elk with heavier projectiles.

A TRIP THROUGH .25 TERRITORY At the low end of the family tree are the .25-20 Winchester and .25-35 Winchester, which are known to have sent small game, coyotes and other varmints to hell by the bushel in their day. Today, both are considered obsolete. On the higher end of performance, you will find the .25 Winchester Super Short Magnum, the .25-06 Remington and the .257 Weatherby Magnum.

In between, there’s the .250 Savage (still called by old-timers the “.250-3000 Savage” because it was capable of producing 3,000 feet per second at the muzzle with an 87-grain bullet back in 1915 when it first appeared), the fabled .257 Roberts and the .257 Roberts Ackley Improved.

I own a .257 Roberts built on a Mauser ’98 action with a Douglas barrel, and I’ve put venison in the freezer with it on both sides of Washington’s Cascade Range. The .250 Savage was introduced in the Savage Model 99 lever-action, and with bullets in the 100- to 120-grain range, it remains a potent round for bucks and billies.

I’ve encountered a few people in the field with Model 94 Winchesters in .25-35, including one old guy who was in the process of notching a tag many years ago. Likewise, the .25-06 Rem. – which is a necked-down .30-06, as the designation implies – can stop North American plains game (antelope and mule deer) anywhere, and has.

The .257 Weatherby Magnum is a blazing-hot dose of flat-shooting nastiness capable of conking midsize game out to several hundred yards, and its fans will argue it can do anything a .270 Winchester can, an argument in which I’ve

never cared to participate.

That all of these rounds have been somewhat forgotten or upstaged by such cartridges as the .243 Winchester, 6mm Remington, 6.5 Creedmoor, .270 Winchester and so many others I won’t mention, that does not mean the .25s can’t do the jobs for which they were developed.

FROM YAWNS TO GASPS When it comes to ballistics, the .25-20 and .25-35 are yawners, which explains why they’ve been consigned to the cemetery. When I did some cursory research for this article, I found two popular loading manuals that didn’t even include data for one or the other, though there is data in the Hodgdon Annual Manual (while you will not find load recommendations for the .300 Savage, which I consider an astonishing omission). Some cartridges go by the wayside, while others have been declared dead so many times, only to be resurrected back into the spotlight, they might be consid-

On the left, the .243 Winchester, next to the .257 Roberts. Both are performers against deer, but the .257 never seemed to get the same attention as the slightly

smaller .243. (DAVE WORKMAN)

FEDERAL CELEBRATES CENTENNIAL WITH NEW HANDGUN, RIFLE LOADS

This year, Federal has been celebrating its 100th anniversary with a bit of pizzazz, and good for them because hitting the century mark happens only once in a lifetime.

The company has also released two loads in .45 ACP in limited edition “throwback packaging.” One load – the Monark Match – features a 230-grain FMJ in a 20-round box that is considered a collectible because it features a box with artwork from a bygone era.

The other round features a 230-grain Federal Hydra-Shok JHP bullet, also in a 20-count box. They are pricey.

Federal also released special packaging with three historic rifle calibers: .30-30 Winchester, .30-06 Springfield and .45-70 Govt. According to a company release, the commemorative packaging takes us back to circa 1963, yet the ammunition inside “o er(s) all the same features and performance of their modern Federal Power-Shok equivalent.”

The .30-30 features a 150-grain bullet, while the .30-06 is topped with a 180-grain pill. The .45-70 o ering has a 300-grain projectile. –DW

ered immortal. (I count among these the .41 Magnum, my personal favorite bigbore handgun round with which I’ve killed three deer.) Some of the newer cartridges truly shine, but a combination of cost, recoil, fickleness and nostalgia will almost certainly bring the .25s back into vogue.

The .25 WSSM gave the quarter-inch caliber something of a boost when it was first introduced back in 2003. It quickly developed a following, and if it works for those folks, good for them. There isn’t a coyote on the prowl that can outrun this round, which is capable of nudging 3,500 fps with the right powder-bullet combination.

The .257 Roberts has proven itself as one of the best mule deer cartridges around, despite it being outhyped by the .243 Win.

Rifles are still available in all of these calibers, though you’ll have to probably visit older gun shops and cruise the aisles of gun shows to find .25-20 and .25-35 specimens. Any of the calibers ranging upwards from the .250 Savage makes a great first gun for young or smaller-frame hunters, and they can be ridiculously accurate, as in three-shot groups covered by a quarter. I’ve managed that with my .257 Roberts using 100-grain Speer boattails or Nosler Ballistic Tip bullets, and I’ve used both pills to put meat in the freezer.

Why did I look at the .25s? Because everybody else seems enamored with anything 6.5mm these days, and I say you can be di erent and still be successful. You’ll probably never see them mentioned in the “Top Ten” of anything, but sometimes the best can hide in the shadows. ASJ

NEW .30 SUPER CARRY

Back in January at the Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade, or SHOT, Show in Las Vegas, a new caliber was introduced for handgunners, the .30 Super Carry, and both CCI Blazer Brass and Speer Ammunition introduced loads.

Blazer Brass entered this arena with a round featuring a 115-grain FMJ bullet .313 inch in diameter, reportedly boasting the same muzzle energy as the 9mm Luger cartridge. This load is designated for training.

Speer Ammunition offers a load with a 115-grain Gold Dot JHP. This smaller cartridge allows for greater magazine capacity in guns chambered for the round.

Federal offers a load pushing a 100-grain HST JHP that leaves the muzzle at an advertised 1,250 feet per second.

Currently, Smith & Wesson offers four different Shield semiauto pistol models that chamber the new cartridge. –DW Editor’s note: Dave Workman is a longtime Washington-based gun writer.

Speer is among ammunition manufacturers o ering rounds in the new .30 Super Carry caliber. (SPEER)