I have always heard it said that the 243 Winchester and 6mm Remington killed the 250 Savage and 257 Roberts as a dual purpose cartridge. It looks to me that neither of those 25's were every set-up to use varmint weight bullets in factory ammo. Thinking out loud...the dual purpose nature of the 243 Winchester and 6mm Remington led to the demise of these single purpose cartridges. To those of you who were alive when the newer 24's came out, would my last statement be correct?
Well, that's what the gun and ammo companies would've had you believe. Their advertising and the gun rag advertising that passed as journalism made them out to be the Second Coming of Christ. Whether that was true or not is for y'all to decide, but I never bought into it. (Why have one gun do it all and take the place of multiple toys? Where's the fun in that?!) The .250-3000 and .257 Roberts (note I didn't say "Bob") took a shellacking in the market place for sure, but it was mainly due to fickleness on the part of ignorant shooters/hunters who took the gunning "authorities" at their word. People could be "sheeples" back then as easily as nowadays.
Good for deer, all of them were, and certainly would kill groundhogs but at the expense of more
sturm und drang and expense over smaller .22 CF's with each trigger pull. Y'all out West who never hunted groundhogs in the far more densely populated Eastern climes don't realize that the quieter your gun is and the more frangible your bullet is the better for everybody - old sayings that actually held some truth, at least in my experience.
In my opinion, if push came to shove and a guy absolutely had to make a .243 or .250-3000 do it all there were/are bullets to choose from to allow for that, but in a compromising role nonetheless -
if you're a handloader. As the OP found out, .250 ammo is thin on the ground to start with let alone in 60-75 grain loadings. RCBS is your friend in that regard.
