Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Milek and the .25-06

Someone posted this article in a different thread.

Its funny. I wasn't around when Milek was writing, so most of what I knew about the guy was what other (later) writers said.

I've read at least a few writers discount Milek's use of the 25-06 on elk because he took head/neck shots.

But after reading this, it looks that was not the case.

http://www.riflemagazine.com/magazine/PDF/ri40partial.pdf

Anyone know where the head/neck shot thing started?

Did writers get away with statements like that because Milek wasn't around to defend himself?

Don't know about writers getting away with statements but I've dropped 3 elk with a 25-06 - 2 within 50 yards were both DRT w/ neck shots. The third at a touch over 100 yards. All with Nosler Partitions.
Only the 100 yard shot did I recover the bullet and it performed as advertised. Passed through the back part of the near shoulder and stopped under the hide on the off side with a slight amount of bleeding through two small holes. No blood-shot meat on any of them.
I used the 25-06 at the time because it was the ONLY rifle I owned!

I've taken over 50 whitetails from Texas to Missouri with it and have rarely NOT had complete pass-through. Add to that about a dozen Mule deer, one at a measured/witnessed 376 yards was quartering towards me. Bullet entered the point of the near shoulder, passed through the near lung and rear of the off lung then glanced off of a rib before smacking into the off hip bone and exiting out of the hip on the same side as the entrance. Sierra 120 gr BTSP left about a 2" exit hole.

The caliber is my preferred caliber for most game but I now take a 30-06 and a 300 Win Mag when I go elk hunting.

I hunted with the 2506 for 6 or 7 years in the 1970s and it was a spectacular killer. Readers should note that the H4831 that Milek refers to was the old surplus powder that was slower burning than todays H4831..I found that even the 120 speer was a bit soft a 2506 velocities and eventually went to the 115 gr nosler partition which worked perfectly.

Never had the opportunity to hunt elk, but a ranch manger in Wyoming I met years ago used a .257 Roberts on everything from badgers to elk, including bighorn sheep and mountain goat, with no complaints, and no lost animals. The .25/06 would just be more of a good thing.

Thanks for that posting of an old Rifle magazine. I remember the cover and now I'll look for it in my pile of old magazines to see what Harvey had to say about the 308

bellydeep,

I don't know who the writers were that claimed Milek mostly (or only) used head and neck shots, but I remember reading other articles by him back then mentioning lung shots on elk with the .25-06.

I've been around a few elk taken with lung shots with various .25 caliber cartridges and they all died pronto, whether the bullet passed through or not, though most of them did. In fact the only .25 caliber bullet I've seen recovered from an elk was the Barnes TTSX 100-grain my wife killed a cow with last month, using a .257 Roberts, but that was a quartering-away shot, not broadside. Have seen the 100-grain Nosler Ballistic Tip exit on a broadside cow elk, from a .25-06.

The older guy who delivered our newspaper when we first moved to this area 24 years ago used a .25-06 on elk. He eventually found out what I did for a living and one day showed me the remains of a .25-06 bullet that failed to penetrate the shoulder of a spike. He wondered why it happened, and I asked him what ammo he used. Turned out it was a 90-grain varmint load! But it also turned out that he'd killed the spike with a second shot, behind the shoulder, which is how he recovered the first bullet.

I would be really really be interested in comparing the penetration of a 120 Nosler Partition from a 25/06 to what some people would consider an "elk thumper", the 35 Whelen with a 225 Partition, both at 200 yards. Never done it, but I think the results might surprise some people, including me.

I suspect so too!

I've taken enough mule deer with the .25-06 that I have no doubt about its ability to kill elk. Performance has been excellent.

When I got the rifle years ago, I was thinking of it as my new mule deer & coyote rifle, and that's largely what I've done with it. A few guys around town and at the range though, told me that they'd taken elk, quite nicely, with their .25-06 rifles. This somewhat surprised me... But not anymore.

It's a good cartridge. Fast. Flat. Accurate. Lethal. And mighty easy on the shooter's shoulder.

Regards, Guy

Bellydeep - thanks for the article. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Regards, Guy

Off the top of my head, Boddington was one of them.

Royce, I don't have any on game shots, but these were a couple jugs tests I did.

My wife's 25-06 loaded to 3140 with the 120 Swift A-Frame. I was blown away when this bullet was found in the 7th. That is really impressive performance in my book. It was the bullet I chose for my wife in order to hunt elk..







Here is a 250 PT from my 35 Newton at 2810. This bullet was found in the 8th jug..







[img]http://i723.photobucket.com/al...-9B3E-F3F02FB6E419_zps1zyimuqq.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i723.photobucket.com/al...-8363-1F7D41E467EC_zpsj0n3slhb.jpg[/img]

Now, I understand the 35 is going to have more frontal area and probably be a more dramatic hitter, but after seeing how well the Swift looks, I would 0 problems with putting one into an elk and expecting good things to happen.

Penetration was very much the same on both of them. I hunt elk personally with my 338 and 35's, but only cause I want to, not cause I feel there are completely necessary.

Guy Miner has been destroying too many antelope and big bodied muleys for me to think it would be less effective with him shooting elk.

Bob Milek was part of the reason I bought a 35 Whelen and then a 25-06. Liked his writing quite alot.

I was also a fan of Milek's articles. Like Aagaard, down to earth, no extry frills. Miss them both.

Bob Milek wasn't the reason I became a 25-06 fan, but his fondness for it mirrored mine.

I Remember reading this when I was a kid. Milek was a great practical writer. He did say at one point he had published some loads that he wish hadn't gotten away from him. Not sure if these are what he was talking about. With current H4831 the top loads are around 52 grains & 120s compared to Milek's 54-55 for the surplus powder.

Funny how the anecdote about a friend shooting a Moose in the neck turns into him taking Elk only with neck shots.

beretzs
Thanks a million for the post and pictures. I suspect that the 35 Newton with the 250 grain bullet would penetrate deeper than the 35 Whelen with a 225 grain bullet at somewhat less velocity.
I have shot a few deer and antelope with the 25/06 and would be hard pressed to tell the difference in it's effectiveness and that of the 270. That 35 Newton of your's must be a heck of an elk rifle, I would think. It apparently has power enough to expand bullets yet still drive them deep.

Royce

Enjoyed the article a bunch. Milek was one of my favorites and he was the one that got me interested in the .25/06 way back when.

I read Milek growing up towards the end of his career and always respected his writing. you are correct about Boddington, in his book Gunsfor north American game he states it and then goes on to say that Milek admitted he did not care for recoil. Milek was also a big fan of the 257 Roberts

Milek is who got me interested in hunting pronghorn antelope, and thus the need to move toward where they live.

Milek was a fave of mine, for good reasons.

He could tell a good story allright. My own findings with the 25-06 pretty much mirror his in that I don't use 100 gr bullets in the 25-06 anymore. Nor the 120 HP Horn on antelope or the 120 HPBT Sierra on any but ribcage shots. The old 120 gr Rem Core-lokt as a favorite and hard to beat. Still need to use it with Nosler's and a few others though. Magnum Man

Edit to add
Milek was a pretty serious fellow and he used to get me laughing pretty hard though. Seems like every month one gun mag or another ran a deer hunting article and whatever gunwriter who wrote it would say " the 30-30 is a solid 100yd deer getter but 150 yds is pushing your luck" next month there would Milek posed over a decent antelope buck or stout looking 4x4 mule deer and a T/C Contender in 30/30 or 30 Herrett that he shot at 175-300 yds. He sure knew how to make some of them guys look like bull sh*tters though.

Seeing the table of contents of that old issue of Rifle brought back memories of the good old days, when they published the kind of articles rifle loonies could really sink their teeth into.

Well my father in law that's nearing 70 years of age uses a 25-06 on mule deer and elk year in and year out going on 9-10 years now. His view is piss on all that recoil I tolerated for so many years, I put the bullet where it needs to go and they die. He also owns several 30 cal rifles that he just doesn't use anymore.

You'll still hear from a lot of Montana hunters that at least a 180-grain bullet is absolutely required for elk. In fact I just watched one yesterday attempt to sight-in his three .30-06's, all loaded with 180's. He obviously wasn't fond of the recoil, but would never dream of using an "inadequate" cartridge like the .25-06.

Yeah my father inlaw is one of those guys that laughs when he hears people say stuff like that. 50 + years of hunting elk and mule deer in Wyoming,Colorado and Utah is a pretty good basis for experience, listening to someone babble about what's needed to kill elk has little influence on him.

Thanks for sharing, remember reading his writings regularly.

I loved reading Milek. His writing was down to earth and as a novice hunter at the time that was a welcome relief from the more blustery writers. I still have some of his writings in my collection.

The last few times I've been to the range I've seen a wide variety of 270, 7mm, and 300 mags being readied for the deer opener.

Me? I've got my 250 Savage ready to go.

Recall a time some years ago, when a member showed up at our range with a new 340 Weatherby and was telling everyone what a deer slayer that thing should be.

Pre-everybody-got-ear muffs days at our club and some of the boys soon demanded he remove the muzzle brake 'cause it was making their ears ring under the "tin" firing line roof.

Think he fired one or two more shots (sans brake) and left in a huff?

I'm a recoil sissyboy and as I've gotten older, that's gotten worse. Could still shoot one of my 25-06s (70s vintage M700) multiple times from a bench with no regrets if I had to. Beauty is, it generally takes three shots and done for a preseason workout.

One year I fired one shot at the 100 yard camp target, smack in the 1" FO target dot, from a bench using the bipod. My son asked if I was gonna shoot again. Said nope, that'un went right where it was 'sposed to go.

Far cry from the days when I shot lots of ammo from that thing prior to deer season, in preparation. By "dumb luck" that particular rifle hasn't been a problem for the past 20 years, but it gets tested every year anyway.

As someone else mentioned, I have several rifles that I no longer use much in deer seasons because the recoil is bothersome. No need to abide the pain, when the 25-06 is ready to go.

He liked the 120 gr Speer in his 25-06 for Elk

I really like mine. As I get older, I prefer the smaller bores. A big gun now is a .270 or .30-06. This one is a Sako AV that's been glass-bedded and the bolt engine-turned. I used to use 117 grainers, but lately I like the 100 grain TTSX Barnes factory load. I haven't whacked anything near the game most here have, but so far, this .25-06 has worked on a Wyoming antelope, a few deer in SC and a couple of pigs in TX.
Bob

Coincidentally I'm taking Dad's old .25-06 hunting this year.

I killed my first two deer with the .25-06, many moons ago. I was using the 100gr Nosler Ballistic Tip, before I learned it was actually considered a varmint bullet One deer it worked fine, the other the bullet did some funky things. But I did recover both animals. I think they have been toughened since then.

This old sporterized Mauser has all kinds of funky things with it. Dad bought it from a coworker who needed money. No markings except the serial number. 1 in 11 twist barrel, military trigger, bolt s/n does not match action, old Weaver scope, etc.



I tried some mild loads with 52gr of R22 and 110gr Accubonds. Apparently no one told the rifle it was funky:



There's five shots in the last group, on the right. The load's making only 3000 fps, but that's plenty for deer, and I don't feel like hopping it up, given the rifle's unknown metallurgy. It oughta work.

I wrote Bob Milek and enclosed a self addressed envelope because he also wrote a lot about the 7x57 Mauser.

I was asking his advice wanting a rifle I could have for family members especially women and children for use on deer and black bear. He sent my note back where he had scribbled "25-06" and after I bought one I am in agreement, a wlnderful light recoil flat shooting caliber.

I got my first .25-06 back in the early '70's when I was shooting woodchucks a lot. It was a heavy barreled Ruger 77. It would shoot 75 grain Sierra HP's into little groups (sub .75"" ) and send a single woodchuck in many directions all at once. I used to love to shoot the ones in front of a low sun and get about a 30' cloud of red air.

I now shoot a .25-06 AI 26" barrel on an Encore. With 100 grain TSX's it kills deer pretty dead. I also killed a caribou close on to 400 yards with it. Pretty good cartridge.

Affirmative. Drop 2-4 grains for modern H4831

This is off topic. So forgive me ahead of time. Why would anyone expect there to be a performance difference between a 25-06 firing any 120 grain big game bullet versus any 270 Winchester firing a similar 130 grain bullet? Is there any performance difference?

No, not really. As far as what it hits.

I liked to read Milek too. He also wrote a lot about the .243 Win as well. And, at a time when many other writes turned their nose up at the .243.

That's because, as somebody once noted, "The only people who apparently have a hard time killing deer with the .243 are some gun writers."

I read every word Bob Milek wrote when I was a kid in the 80s, I lived in Pa. and dreamed of seeing what Bob seen on his hunts..... I now lived just over the Bighorns from the area Bob did and am happy !!!!
That being said I hunt elk with a 7x57 because of people like Finn AAgard and JB.........

I was just turning 18 when I first started reading Milek. He was a great writer and taken from us too soon. Very practical, down to earth guy. I need to go back and reread some of his stuff. Haven't looked at some of those old magazines in a while. That will make for some enjoyable winter afternoons in front of the fire.

To be fair, 6mm bullets have improved a lot. If those writers who didn't like it back when, were reviewing the 243 Winchester today, they may be impressed with it.

I was a Bob Milek fan back when also.
Years ago I was driving through Thermopolis Wy and ahead of me was a familiar silhouette with hat in a small pickup just ahead of me. It pulled into a driveway a mile or two north of town.
The next time I drove by there I saw a name on the mailbox... "Milek".

Interesting comment about Aagard. He didn't have much published in Oz at the time but I bought his book about 20 years back and in it he stated, that he had witness the largest number of one shot kills in Africa from the .270 Winchester.

After writing so much about the 7x57 when he got his cherished BRNO imported from Kenya, he reamed it out to .280. That did puzzle me until I started doing that myself "Just to see" what the next in line would do.

I never liked Milek's stories on the .30/06 as he always listed handloading data akin to indoor mouse safari loads, until I started using a .30/06 to cull and realized he was completely correct. It simply didn't matter whether that 180 grain bullet was doing 2625fps in a pathetic factory load or 2800fps in a manicured handload, the damn things still fell over dead.

At that point, I started digesting what I was seeing more objectively and started to notice that caliber "seemed" to play a larger role in performance moreso than velocity in "some cases".

Now I can quite fairly contradict myself here, as I also saw velocity make a larger difference that caliber in "some cases" and to quote one, I saw more dramatic performance from the .257 Weatherby than I did from the .270 Winchester. I saw the same performance from the 6.5x55 Swede compared to the .270.

In reality to the masses, everything works, which makes the rifle more important that the cartridge and the bullet more relevant to the game being hunted.

The .270 worked for Aagard for the same reason the .25/06 worked for Milek, Shootability. If it is more pleasant to use, the average hunter can place the bullet more accurately because concentration is not taxed by recoil and muzzle blast. This makes standard bullet perform as well as they did before the premiums came along with the vengeance we have experienced over the last 25 years. Lucky us!

Therein, lies the secret that most try not to discover as competence and reliability is apparently, just too boring.
John

Could be wrong, but seems I remember a quote from Mule Deer a few years back where he said, in his experience, the 257 Wby had an unusual propensity to make dramatic kills on game relative to the size of bullet it shoots.

Is this correct JB? If not, my apologies.

It was something like that, anyway!

Something that struck me 'funny' when reading Milek as a lad is also something JB mentioned in print before. Milek would write about efficiency, to which I would snicker at.

It took awhile, but I understand exactly what he meant and he was spot on.

The 25/06 is mostly what I use on deer, although I like my 308 also, but favour my 25/06.

John Wooters was the 243 guy of his day. IIRC, he favored the 105 gr Nosler Partition for deer with it, and Tx deer are often very small critters. Ditto Fla, and Ark. 80 lbs being a big buck.

a friend of mine had taken nearly 20 deer, with 308, 06, all fell to the shot. so he poopooed this stuff about needing lots of power, etc. Then he hit an 80 lb Ark buck from the front quarter, using 165 gr sp's at 2900+ fps in his O6. It ran off, no blood trail, no hair. It was nearly dusk, he ran for help. 4 of them, using flashlights, took half an hour to find lung blood, 40 yds away and almost as long to actually find the buck, another 40 yds away. It had a broken shoulder and a severed aorta.

Jim Carmichael hit a deer twice, with 338 sp's, broke both shoulders, x crossed the chest with the wound channels, and it still ran quite a ways.

I saw a guy cut himself badly on the eyebrow with the scope, while firing prone with a Remington 788 243 and factory ammo. It's not recoilless, guys.

Your're right.A dipshitt proof rifle hasnt been invented yet..

Wow, that took some effort on his part...

Back to the .25-06, love it! Milek's writings were part of the reason I gave the .25-06 a try. My current one has been my mule deer & coyote rifle for ten years now, and in recent years delivered a couple of pronghorn as well. Love the gentle nudge on the shoulder, quick recovery in the odd case when a second shot might be needed, superb accuracy, flat trajectory at reasonable ranges... Easy to load, easy to shoot. Everything Milek claimed for it.

One of these days I ought to put a 115 Nosler Partition in an elk or a black bear...

Regards, Guy

I have been waiting for it to happen..

I loved Milek's writing, and remember him writing extensively about quarter bores.
It was advice from a friends dad though, which eventually steered me in that direction.

I was coyote hunting a couple of years back when I ran across my buddies dad at a gas station/quik mart. He asked what I was shooting and I showed him my rifle. He then asked me why I chose a 25-06, and I reminded him that he'd recommended it years ago.

He got a chuckle out of that. Then he told me that he got the idea from a Milek article...