Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles First Impressions: Remington R25 GII .308

I know there is an AR section here on the forums, but this R25 is supposed to be a hunting rifle, so I thought I'd stick this review in here.

I'm really a bolt-gun guy, but I found myself wanting to try out a larger-caliber autoloader for medium range hog hunting. After looking around a little bit, the GII rifles from DPMS and sister company Remington seemed to check off the most boxes. I like the look of the furniture better on the Remington model, so I ordered one and got my hands on it this week. Dimensionally, it is not much different from my 18" general-purpose AR15 I keep around the house, but weight is about 3/4 of a pound more for the naked rifle. Also, the recoil spring is much heavier, resulting in a significantly heavier pull to work the bolt. With a steel magazine and optics/mounts, this rifle comes in a little under 9.5lbs.



Fit and finish on this one is actually pretty good for a Remington product and it is the "tightest" AR I have owned. There's no slop or wiggle in anything, making it feel almost like a one-piece stocked rifle. The carbon-fiber handguard is slim and not cold like aluminum. The buttstock was a plus, as I like the cheek rest and the Supercell pad. This gun comes with a 20" stainless 1-10" twist fluted barrel that has been teflon coated. The factory trigger was just about creep-free and broke at 4lb 14oz. I had a 3.3lb Rock River Varmint trigger in the 18" AR, so I swapped them out, along with the ambi-safety that came on the R25, which I don't care for on a hunting rifle. I also mounted a 3-9x40 Leupold VX-R in a Leupold Mk2 1pc unit.

Going to my range today, I took along a handful of ammo loaded with 155 Scenars over 45.5gr of RL15 in W-W brass. This is about 1-1.5gr below what many folks shoot in bolt guns for this combo of components. Putting two on paper at 25 yards surprised me with the lack of recoil, easily being the softest .308 I've ever shot. Shots 3,4,5 went just a bit over MOA at 100yds. My father asked to shoot it, so I loaded him some inexpensive Winchester Deer Season XP 150gr rounds in the magazine and he put the next three in an inch at 100yds. I then put a few clicks in the scope to adjust for a 200yd zero, sat down and sent three quick shots into 1.5" on the 200yd target with the factory ammo. I'm not going to argue with MOA or better from $20 ammo. All the brass was 15' behind me, at 5 o'clock and none of it looked beat up.

Overall, I'm thinking DPMS/Remington got it right here with the GII hunter models, and more shooting/hunting will hopefully prove this out, but I'm fairly impressed at the moment. The rifle feels good for an AR, and it shoots smoothly and accurately thus far with no real tinkering. It should make a solid hog rifle for inside 300yds, and I look forward to some kills this season.

Very nice rifle jpro. I damn near bought one of those, before my armalite AR10 came along. Thanks for the report on this one.

Looks like things are off to a good start. Another sow for the sausage man.

I got my Midwest Industries 308 dialed in yesterday and it is a pussy cat too. My PSA Lower came today so I may have enough time to get it dialed in tomorrow so I’ll have 2 308 autos to take with me Saturday for the opener. If I find some 6.5 Grendel ammo I’ll try and slap that together too. I always make deer season complicated 🤪

That's a nice pig perforator JPro !