Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors “The Spiteful Crack of the .250-3000”

I posted this for jay in the post in Hunting Rifles forum and figured here might be appropriate

Thanks for posting. The 250-3000 is still my favourite SAVAGE cartridge and a versatile caliber in the field - an under rated slayer.

With modern monolithic bullets the 250 is a whole 'nother animal.

Well, a very nicely written article.

But what can the 250 do that the 22 HP can't do with a 70 grain bullet?

The 250 is a sexy little thing, but show me a 300 with a 150 or 180 grain bullet and I will show you meat....

The Thunder of the .300.

My favorite is the 180 grain silvertips. I have had very good luck from 15 to 230 yards.

Doesn't matter a helluva lot what you poke a deer with. Hit it right and it becomes meat. If I were starting out today I would be quite happy using my Browning Low Wall single shot .223 for deer and nothing else. Deer aren't mythical creatures with Kevlar hides and titanium bones. With each passing decade of my life I've gradually downsized the calibers I hunt with. Even stuff like the six or eight .30-06's I own rarely get shot with anything other than reduced cast bullet loads anymore. (The exception is the Garand, but that heavy beast with its wide butt plate and gas system makes a pussy cat out of the '06.)

I love the .250 for its efficiency all out of proportion to its size. I like the .22HP for its novelty. I dislike the .300 for its sharp bite in lightweight thin-stocked rifles. I'm forever thankful that Savage never found a way to shoehorn magnum cartridges into their delightful little rifles.

I related a couple anecdotes about the author of that story "The Spiteful Crack of the .250-3000" over in the hunting rifle forum. Jim Bashline was a heckuva guy.

Thanks for posting.....an enjoyable read.

Deer are easy to kill, but at least where I hunt them, they are not always easy to find. They don't always just tip over dead when the gun cracks even with a well placed shot.

The 300 makes that job a lot simpler.

Whatever gun I am using I prefer to have a bullet that will break shoulders. I don’t like to track. With today’s bullets a .223 is an excellent deer gun and I have had no problem breaking both shoulders with a TSX Barnes in it

i own a 250 Savage 99 great little rifle ! i built a new 257 Creedmoor and yes its accurate and has a 7 1/2 twist barrel and its part of the fade in cartridges but really its just a 250 Savage its so close in size and speed.

What model 99 is pictured in the article?

Late postmil 99A.

I agree with this statement. I've great respect for the .250-3000 and have taken several deer with it but, I noticed I wasn't getting the same results as when using my .300 on very similar shots so I retired it and went back to my .300. No rodeos since.
P.S. I even load my .308 and .30'06 to .300 Savage velocities because it just works!

Gotta admit, when I saw the title of the thread, I thought “stock crack”?

At the end of the day, they all work. It's human nature to have "brand loyalty" and to defend that loyalty. It's all good.

About the only thing I wouldn't tackle a deer with would be a .22 short, and a fellow Camper here routinely whacks Florida hogs in the head with .22 shorts and bang-flops them, so maybe that's a viable cartridge for deer too....

Head shots are pretty definitive. Heart/lung/spinal column are fairly debilitating too with a bullet that has the moxie to attain them, doesn't matter quite how big of a bullet that is either.

What I consider to be downright silly is guys taking to the woods with Weatherby magnums and the like.

Mind you I should clarify that I'm referring to typical Eastern woods/farm fields. Mayhaps our pardners who hunt in the high, wide, and lonesome have quite different ideas.

Good article. Couple things..

1) Creator of the 250-3000. We have a contemporary account from one of the early 1914 testers of the 250-3000 that it was Charles Newton who thought up the concept and created a long action prototype, and Savage engineer Charles Nelson who created the short action final version.

2) What the heck is this? "re-introduced straight-grip 99F which appeared briefly during the early 70's" ???. I presume he means the 99A? This is odd, considering the pictures all show a 99A, and all he had to do was read the model off the barrel.

Wonder if the rifle he viewed as a kid was like this? It's a 1941 99EG in 250-3000 with period Stith and Lyman Alaskan.. That'd be a good article to print out and save with this rifle.

303 range




284 (or Weatherby) range








Not all hunts are created equal therefore there are different cartridges for each. I wouldn't hunt brush with the 340, nor would I hunt across the canyon with the 30-30.

Bashline was born around 1930 (I remember he was about the same age as my Mom and Dad), so it would've been mid-late 1940's when he encountered the sport with the .250-3000.

Great article! I finally got a doe antelope tag for this season. I've killed an antelope or two with the 250-3000 and will use my bubbaed switch barrel 99G this year. This article fired me up to use it with the Westfield 250-3000 barrel, 1 in 10" twist and 100 grain bullet, probably a Nosler BT.

He says 1941 in the article. The week before Pearl Harbor.

I believe I have that magazine.