Used to shoot the hell out of my 25-06's. Factory WW 120gr open pt expanding loads. Then got into 5 boxes of 120 gr open pt boattail Sierras. Worked up a load with fed 215 primers in WW cases with max doses of surplus H870. 3100fps with good enough groups for deer and antelope. Shot whatever got in front of me coyotes, pd's and other varmints. Those sierras were OK on ribcage shots but on quartering angles they didn't hold up well. Back then a guy could buy bulk 120 gr Remington corelokts sold as component bullets. Shot a lot of them and H870 , aren't very high bc but they shot well and held together. Wandered to some older 100 gr corelokts (red& white boxes with metal corners) and the were pretty explosive at 33-3400 fps. Looking back on it they were probably made for 250-3000 velocity levels. After 3 antelope with baseball sized exit holes in the ribs I used them up on pd's. Bought a couple boxes of 120 Hornady hollow pts. They didn't expand at all on antelope lungs, just penciled thru so I shot pd's with them ,they were very accurate though. Now days the 117 gr horn btsp sees action and do have a supply of 115 npt's and 115 nbt's to work up. That old mid 70's model 70 has some barrel wear on it, shot it alot it taught me that the 25-06 isn't a good choice for dog shooting. Few here and there to check your zero but that's it.A couple of years ago I picked up a ss m700 lnib for a song will see if she will sing. Some life left to that m70 I just don't want to finish her off.
Interesting as I semi retired a 80’s model 70 in 25.06 in 2006 when I bought a 700 BDL 25.06. It shoots just as well as the old one with 117 Sierra Pro Hunter, 53 grains RL22.
My favorite bullets for deer are in order
117 pro hunter ( I bought 10 boxes while I could)
120 Speer
115 BT although I had a couple of pencil throughs with the early ones, tried em again about 5 years later and they worked fine.
110 AB. Little stout unless you have armor plated deer.
100 grain Sierra (once) since if using a 100 grain I usually went 243.
