This spring I picked up a Remington R25 (DPMS AR10) in 243 WIN, I’m a huge fan of the 243 and couldn’t pass this rifle up, I figured it would make a great Yote gun and could even be used for deer and antelope as well, plus I just thought it was a neat looking and a nice change from the rest of my black guns.
I was worried that the light contoured lower grade 20” barrel wouldn’t yield anything close to the accuracy I’m use to, especially being a lower end AR platform rifle (compared to JT ect). I haven’t done any real load development, partly because I lack appropriate optics for such and also because I felt it would for the most part be a waist of time on this rifle, also I bought this to hunt with and was going to try from keeping myself from wanting anything other than that out of it.
At any rate I’ve just been loading up rounds straight out of the books. I’ve, more or less been looking at them and going ok that sounds good. I will also state my loads have not been all the precise. I’ve been running them on my progressive press at a pretty fast rate using Winchester brass, no sorting trimming and shamefully not even chamfering the mouth, no prep whatsoever, just one pass thru the full length and away they go. Primers are Winchester LR, powder of choice has been RL 15.
I’m absolutely shocked how well this rifle is shooting considering the conditions. With 87 grain Vmax pills it will shoot almost thru the same hole every time at 100 and this is with the Weaver 10.9X scope and a big fat reticle, I;m sure a little more magnification and a thinner reticle would yield even better results. The 95 grain Nosler CT BTBT have also been lights out. Shooting is done with a bipod and bagged rear. I was out this weekend playing with some 58 and 75 grain Vmax stuff, once again went to the range with 25 of each in the same recipe, the 58 load didn’t shoot that great, still at or below 1 MOA at 100 but the 75 grain loads shot very well over the 38 grains of RL15. I wish I would have brought more ammo, after wasting 10 rounds playing around at 100 I took them out to see what they would do at some longer distances, once again I was expecting the results to be somewhat disappointing but was surprised to come away happy again, had it not been for the constant gusting wind I’m sure I’d be an even happier camper.
I shot 5 shot groups at 200,300 and 400 yards, the wind was swirling especially hard down at 300-400 range, that’s where it was coming into the rang from and bouncing off the side walls.
The 100 yard group was a 1.26”, .6” if you take out the called flier but there is no called flier in hunting so we’ll leave it in there.
The 200 yard group was a 2.34”, 1.34” if you take out the called flier, .4” if you go best 3 out of 5, I’m absolutely certain the poor shots were my fault and not the rifle/ammo, but 200 yards with 11 power is getting to be a bit hard to shoot ¼ moa with, I felt myself pull that lower shot right away, the trigger is VERY stiff and hard to work with.
300 yards the lack of scope power was becoming even more of a factor, 2.81” was the results, still well within my hunting needs.
400 had the group opening up to 4.28”, 2.95” if you take out the one rouge shot, even at 4.28” I’m still tickled silly to be shooting just over 1 MOA at 400 yards with a light barreled AR10 with 11X optics. That concludes this range report, I’m going to go back to the 95 grain pills and maybe load them up in some nice Lupua brass, BR2’s and hand weighed charges, overall I give the R25 a big thumbs up so far!
I was worried that the light contoured lower grade 20” barrel wouldn’t yield anything close to the accuracy I’m use to, especially being a lower end AR platform rifle (compared to JT ect). I haven’t done any real load development, partly because I lack appropriate optics for such and also because I felt it would for the most part be a waist of time on this rifle, also I bought this to hunt with and was going to try from keeping myself from wanting anything other than that out of it.
At any rate I’ve just been loading up rounds straight out of the books. I’ve, more or less been looking at them and going ok that sounds good. I will also state my loads have not been all the precise. I’ve been running them on my progressive press at a pretty fast rate using Winchester brass, no sorting trimming and shamefully not even chamfering the mouth, no prep whatsoever, just one pass thru the full length and away they go. Primers are Winchester LR, powder of choice has been RL 15.
I’m absolutely shocked how well this rifle is shooting considering the conditions. With 87 grain Vmax pills it will shoot almost thru the same hole every time at 100 and this is with the Weaver 10.9X scope and a big fat reticle, I;m sure a little more magnification and a thinner reticle would yield even better results. The 95 grain Nosler CT BTBT have also been lights out. Shooting is done with a bipod and bagged rear. I was out this weekend playing with some 58 and 75 grain Vmax stuff, once again went to the range with 25 of each in the same recipe, the 58 load didn’t shoot that great, still at or below 1 MOA at 100 but the 75 grain loads shot very well over the 38 grains of RL15. I wish I would have brought more ammo, after wasting 10 rounds playing around at 100 I took them out to see what they would do at some longer distances, once again I was expecting the results to be somewhat disappointing but was surprised to come away happy again, had it not been for the constant gusting wind I’m sure I’d be an even happier camper.
I shot 5 shot groups at 200,300 and 400 yards, the wind was swirling especially hard down at 300-400 range, that’s where it was coming into the rang from and bouncing off the side walls.
The 100 yard group was a 1.26”, .6” if you take out the called flier but there is no called flier in hunting so we’ll leave it in there.
The 200 yard group was a 2.34”, 1.34” if you take out the called flier, .4” if you go best 3 out of 5, I’m absolutely certain the poor shots were my fault and not the rifle/ammo, but 200 yards with 11 power is getting to be a bit hard to shoot ¼ moa with, I felt myself pull that lower shot right away, the trigger is VERY stiff and hard to work with.
300 yards the lack of scope power was becoming even more of a factor, 2.81” was the results, still well within my hunting needs.
400 had the group opening up to 4.28”, 2.95” if you take out the one rouge shot, even at 4.28” I’m still tickled silly to be shooting just over 1 MOA at 400 yards with a light barreled AR10 with 11X optics. That concludes this range report, I’m going to go back to the 95 grain pills and maybe load them up in some nice Lupua brass, BR2’s and hand weighed charges, overall I give the R25 a big thumbs up so far!
