.25-06

[Brian Williams]

A 223 is a varmint round as far as I am concerned. I can hardly tell what the sex of a deer is at 300 or 400 yards even with the fat Eastern Whitetails around here. I hope that you have a very good stand with a great rest for your rifle and a very good scope.

Otherwise, Welcome to THR.

 

[Shadow Shock]

I usually keep the magnification on my scope at 16x, although for those REALLY long shots, I turn it up all the way (24x). while not necesary it is very usefull. Look through a scope at that high magnification and you can see just how much your crosshairs are moving. What appears steady at 4x, can be moving like crazy at 16x. So if you get them steady at such a high magnification, you are minutley ajusting the aim of you rifle untill you can get it exactly were you want it. I have never used a benchrest in my life when shooting at a range. I allways use an improvised rest like I would find in the woods. my knee, a jacket on a table, the crotch of a tree, a stump or log, or even my hand pressed against the side of a tree with the rifle resting between the thumb ant tme index finger. they all work great although nothing I've used beats my dad's brown jacket from Tractor Supply balled up on a table or the hood of a truck. portable, very steady, and it lets you track targets as they walk across your feild of veiw. We use it to sight in and we use it in the woods. As for the .223 being a varmit cartyrige, I don't know how deer are were you live but down here, they're like fairly large great Danes

 

[atblis]

20 Yards

Hmmm. I might have bought +-50Yards at 400yards.

Well anyways, a range misjudgment of 25 yards either way (long or short) at 400 yards is an error of about 7" either high or low with a 223 55gr CLKT.

At 500 yards with a 25-06 +-25yards is about +- 8" with a 100gr CLKT.

That's enough to put you out of the vitals.

I'd invest in a laser range finder.

 

[R.W.Dale]

I'd invest in a laser range finder.

NO WAY then the stories wouldn't be nearly as entertaining.

 

[atblis]

Yep

That reminds me. I had a friend who used to tell outlandish stories. Personal favorite was the deer he "dropped" at 200 yards with 7 1/2 shot.

He always used to say "yeah it was that far, I stepped it off"

Well, one day we were shooting at fence boards (the neighbors fence no less) with his new 3.5" Mossy. It was hitting them pretty hard, so he's like "what's that, like 50 yards". My other friend and I looked at each other and started chuckling. It was about 20 feet. We designated a new unit of measurement called David yards.

 

[Shadow Shock]

I wish i could afford a laser range finder. And if at all posible, I try to sneak in as close to my target as possible. However I can't allways do that. That's when Long range comes in. and that's why I prefer to hunt from the ground. It's a lot harder to get out of a stand without being seen, than to simply bellycrawl through tall grass. However, when I have my .25-06, I can be more confident when I have no choice but to make a long shot. I passed up an 11-point buck early last season because he was in a bad spot on the other side of the top of a hill and all I could see was his head. Not wanting to mess up such a trophy, I tried to sneak closer, but he spotted me. My dad shot him a month later in the neck at 25yd with our .243

 

[Lonestar.45]

Instead I was assaulted with a hail of ignorance and bias that astounds me to hear coming from experienced hunters.

If you come in here like you did talking about how you want a rifle to shoot deer 500yds plus and bragging about shooting deer at 300yds with a .223, you shouldn't be surprised at all that experienced hunters are going to call your BS on it, and you don't have room to talk about ignorance. If you want to shoot that far and test your skills, stick to targets not live animals. There's no reason in the world you couldn't fill every tag every season at 150yds or less anywhere in Texas. I have for the last 20 or so years. Purposefully shooting at deer 500yds plus is not ethical hunting in many people's eyes.

However, when I have my .25-06, I can be more confident when I have no choice but to make a long shot

You ALWAYS have a choice whether or not to pull the trigger.

 

[R.W.Dale]

 

[atblis]

Okay

To answer your question, the 25-06 is leaps and bounds ahead of the 223 at any range.

I suggest downloading some ballistics software (Remington has some on their website), and playing around with it to figure out if you're really up to the task of long range shooting. The numbers they give are pretty good. If you're smart, you'll figure out that you should just get closer.

BTW
A misjudgment of 25 yards at 600 yards is about a foot difference in impact (with the 25-06). So if you insist on long range shooting, GET A LASER RANGE FINDER

 

[Shadow Shock]

By ignorance, I mean people not accepting that a better expanding version of a cartrige, that's been combat proven for 4 decades against everyone from Vietnamese, to Somalis, to Iraqis, to Afgahnis, wouldn't be able to take a North American Whitetail. Does this make a lot of senseto everyone out there? And I only talked about my longrange kills so I could get info on the .25-06. Asin, "If this guy can take a whitetail at 300yd with a .223, how far should he be able to take one with the more powerful, flatter shooting .25-06?" And there is no point in telling BS stories to people I have never met, and probobly never will meet.

 

[Art Eatman]

I remember one time my uncle mounted a scope on a guy's rifle and then sighted it in for him. The standard deal for a .30-'06; two inches high at 100 yards.

The guy comes back, later, griping that there was a problem with the scope. He'd missed a deer at 300 yards!

So, Uncle Joe takes the rifle and ammo and the guy out to the benchrest.

"Yeah, that's 300 yards!" the guy said, looking at the target.

He was ready to fight before finally taking my uncle's word that no, it wasn't 300 yards, it was 100 yards. Surveyed. Three lengths of a surveyor's 100-foot chain.

Lotsa deer killed, out there at 300 yards. Some get missed, too.

Art

 

[atblis]

Well

You're argument is flawed. Hunters don't have the same standards for performance (much higher actually), or the same considerations that the military does. The military doesn't use the 5.56 because it is the best performing round. They also don't generally issue expanding hunting bullets.

Weight. I do not carry a couple hundred rounds of hunting ammo.
Training. Low recoil requires less rounds to train a new recruit.
Recoil. Rapid fire not needed for me so...
Tactics. I am not sure they're always interested in actually hitting targets. Suppression till you can get something better in there.
Killing Power. Again, I am not convinced the military actually wants a round that drops somebody on the spot. At least it isn't the top priority.

It's an optimization. It doesn't do anything the best, just good enough.

etc. etc.
And you should note that the debate about 5.56's performance is at longer ranges (anything past 300 yards really). It's generally accepted that it works okay at ranges where it has enough velocity to fragment.

With most capable deer rounds, 300 yards is usually about the point were things start to get interesting regarding drop.

 

[Shadow Shock]

300yd estimated by Myself, Leon White (my dad), and stephen Savory (property owner. Then Mr. Savory paced it out at exactly 298 yd. Oh did I mention that my dad did a lot of surveying when he was in the Sea Bee's (Naval Construction Battalions) and as his current civillian job as a contractor?

 

[Frog48]

Dude, give it up. This conversation is going nowhere. Your outlandish stories are a little hard to believe.

 

[Shadow Shock]

I did not want the conversation to get to people bantering back and forth about my favorite round. However, thats what happened and I can't help but reply back. We're all to stubborn and our beliefs are to strongly rooted for anything we say to change anyone's mind. If gun owners wern't like that, the librals would have disarmed us long ago.

 

[Bartholomew Roberts]

Instead I was assaulted with a hail of ignorance and bias that astounds me to hear coming from experienced hunters.

It occurs to me that many of the hunters here have been hunting for more years than you have been alive. Perhaps if you are so well informed, you'd be better off making your own decisions on these issues instead of asking such poor ignoramuses whose 20 years of hunting experience conflicts with your own.

In the meantime, this thread does not seem to be going anywhere informative, so consider it closed.