Varmint/plinking bullets for 25-35 WCF

Ducksoup

New member
For over a decade I've been loading my older Winchester 94 in 25-35 WCF using the Speer 75 grain JFP bullets and they've been extremely accurate with good performance on the chucks and ground squirrels I've shot with it. Now that Speer has discontinued that particular bullet i'm not sure which bullet to try? I think the Hornady 65 grain flat point is to light and the 117 grain round nose is to heavy to give any decent trajectory out beyond 100 yards. Does anyone have any practical experience with the lighter bullets out of the 25-35? I think someone makes an 85 or maybe an 87 grain flat point but i'm not sure which company makes it? Any thoughts or suggestions?
Thanks
 
For rock chucks and GS you can single load and use any of the pointed bullets.

You can also get 85gr cast bullets in bulk they are intended for the 25-20 but make great small game loads, I use them in my 25-205 and 250-3000. I order 500 at a time from Meister Bullets.

Make a die/bullet holder and cut enough point off just about any bullet.
 
For chucks, single loading as AWS recommended is the way to go, but you realize that you can put one round in the magazine...IF it will feed!

This way, you end up with a two shot!
 
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I've done that with my 218 Bee 1894 CL with 40gr NBT's, one in the chamber one in the mag, it works quite well.

75gr V-max is a great bullet in the .257's

I have a very old 6.5x58R Sauer that has a bore diameter of .260. It is too tight for .264 bullets and until I got a bullet swaging die to size the .264's down I shot the 75gr .257 V-Max out of it and it shot well.

BOxtQQ.jpg

 
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Funny thing, I keep taking it out to kill a coyote with the rifle barrel and end up killing them with the shotgun barrel.

I don't take a lot of pictures, mostly at conventions for the forum, this one was in Elko a couple weeks ago at the convention.

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This was the first convention in Tucson

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Second convention at Tucson

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It was a basket case when I bought it and it took me a couple years to get it up and running plus finding reloading dies, swaging dies, cases and data.

At the Las Cruses Convention I was using the 12ga/5.6x50R Mag Combo
 
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That is a brain fart it was suppose to read 25-204, the 204 Ruger necked to .257, first cousin to the 257 Kimber with no fire forming and off the shelf dies. It will match the original factory 250-3000 and 257 Roberts specs. I run 100gr NPT's at 2850fps and 75gr V-max at 3150fps. A few yeas ago Gary Reeder brought it out as the 257 Raptor. I built mine in 2005 the year after 204 brass became available.
 
Thinking outside of the box here.

Over on the Cast Boolits forum several years ago a member there named Junior 1942 (passed away now) was doing considerable testing with his favorite deer hunting rig, a 10” Contender in 7mm TCU.

He was running into a dilemma in finding a jacketed bullet to his liking. He ended up taking the 154 Hornady spitzer and truncating the nose turning it into a shorter flat point. He used a Harbor Freight mini chop saw with a jig he built to get some degree of consistency at bullet length and weight.

I shoot 25-35, 25 Rem and 25-20 Win and have contemplated such an endeavor since Speer dropped the 75 gr FP from their production.

Three44s
 
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