My oldest son has one in the 94 XTR. It has beautiful wood, by the way. I load it for him. He's taken bear, deer and chucks with it. The first animal was a huge 400 lb whitetail buck out of central New Brunswick. That was in using a factory load. Sometime after that I started putting loads together for that rifle.
As a store- bought common bullet, I'd recommend the 220gr Speer. But I also loaded some of the 250gr Speer SP HotCors by clipping off the lead point. They ended up weighing about 247 grs. He took that load moose hunting but didn't find a moose to use it on. A cannelure isn't needed if the load is compressed and the neck tension on the bullet is adequate. They were moving out at close to 2200 fps. The 220 load was well over 2300 fps.
It's a very practical rifle for woods hunting of large game and can be effective to 200 yds or so.
I also put together some light bullet loads (bullets for the .357 Magnum) for chuck hunting. On chuck he shot dropped so fast in tall grass that we temporarily lost sight of it. But a piece went flying straight up for about 6 feet. We didn't know what part of the critter but it helped in locating it. Guess what? It was its tail! He never hit the tail as the bullet hole was in the chest, but the impact was such that the tail broke off at the root and flew straight up for 6 or 7 feet! Good varmint rifle too.
Bob
www.bigbores.ca
