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

Looking forward to the pictures.

I love antelope venison.

I'll be in Wyoming again next year with a 250-3000.

Can't wait...

Took antelope with my father-in-law's 250-3000, would love to go out and get a couple more. We make fajitas out of the meat... oh my gosh, it's good stuff!

If you're dreaming about taking a 250-3000 chambered rifle hunting, try reading "Elk Tactics" by Don Laubach. As I recall, he starts it off with a description of how his dad shot a big elk with an 87 grain bullet from a 250-3000 Savage 99 at around 200 yards and dropped him with one shot.

My hunting mentor used a 25-35 exclusively when he started deer hunting, and never felt undergunned!

I haven't hunted elk yet with a 250-3k. Got two elk licenses this year. Might try the 250 after I fill the freezer with the first one.

As with any caliber of choice, it boils down to ethics. Knowing the capabilities (and deficiencies) of a cartridge/rifle combination is paramount - coupled with the rational ability to pass up shots that are dodgy.

Example: an animal 250 yards away that's impossible to approach any closer to and is not presenting a clean shot for a light caliber. Instead of trying to thread that bullet through a lot of meat, guts, and bone into a lethal spot simply because you have blood lust is unethical. It's the mature hunter that waves his hat at it and wish it good luck, and moves on to the next quarry. Sure, modern bullet technology mitigates many of our old concerns in that regard, but the chance for failure is still good because none of us can exactly predict the squirrely path a bullet takes when penetrating a large expanse of animal matter, or the bit of movement the animal might do during the time it takes for our synapses to start the process of sending the bullet on its flight. Is the answer to simply use a more powerful cartridge? Not necessarily - it'll likely make a bigger mess of things instead of just a regular mess of things.

Conclusion: Use the .250-3000 and 87gr bullets, or the .223 with 55gr TSX's, or the .30-30 with cast bullets, or the .22 Hornet* if you dare. Just be careful about it and don't let "trophy fever" or a hungry belly cloud your decision to pull/not pull the trigger.



* Don't laugh. An uncle of mine routinely filled his Pennsylvania tag every year with one, killing more deer with it in his hunting career than many can dream about. Long story short, he had ethics.

Back in my younger days I knew an older hunter who killed his 3 or 4 deer every year with a Winchester Model 70 in .22 Hornet. He let ‘em walk if the shot wasn’t there

Elk are big animals with thick hide, dense muscle and heavy bones.

I would not trust any 25 caliber jacketed bullet to get through the hide and even so much as a rib of an elk without breaking up.

If shooting at deer is like shooting at 7/16' plywood then shooting at elk is like shooting at cinder blocks.

Taking your 25 caliber deer rifle with deer loads in it and expecting it to humainly and constistantly take elk is pretty niave. The fact that somebody else has done it before doesn't make it a great idea.

So many better choices.

If Barnes could/would make a monometal TSX .25 bullet of a length to function in our slow twist Savage barrels it would negate that premise, I believe. I'm a Luddite in many ways but even I can understand the tremendous advances in modern bullet technology that have pretty much evaporated the wisdom of our fathers in such regards. A TSX out of a .223 will smash through both shoulders of a deer and cause mayhem in between (and I'm not advocating for .22's for elk mind you), so why wouldn't a larger one do the same in an elk?

I thought this was a political thread, saw "spiteful crack" and old dim brain flashed on image of Meghan McCain.

David has a Westfield 1-10” twist barrel on his 250-3000, so hunting with premium bullets is an option for him. I don’t know that an elk is so tough that it would be unethical to hunt it with a 100gr Partiition, for example.

I've used the 75 grain original Barnes X in 1-14" ROT barrels to shoot whitetails with rifles chambered in 250-3000 and 25 WSSM. I bought a couple hundred of them many years ago so that I could shoot deer with rifles that had been zeroed with 75 grain VMax without having to rezero them. Not the most accurate bullets in the World, but accurate enough for shooting medium game.

And still no one noticed the November 31, 1941 date.

Just because nobody mentiond it does NOT mean nobody noticed it.;

On the right track now.

In a 1-10 barrel the 120 grain partition would probably be a better choice than the 100.

If somebody had a bug up their butt to kill an elk with a 257, the 120 in the 25-06 makes a lot more sense to me.

People can do whatever they want.

JMO

David

I too have a 250 Savage with a Westfield barrel. It’s a 1956 model “F”that has a Westfield barrel. Must have been a leftover receiver they had after the move to Westfield. I have several loads that work well with 100 grain bullets. I use 100 grain Nosler Partitions for my hunting load and they’ve never failed me. The 1 in 10 twist gives you lots of options.

Joe

As far as 257 diameter bullets go, I shot an elk at over 300 yards with my 257 Weatherby. I used a 100 grain partition. The bullet went between two ribs and created a lot of mayhem to the lungs and heart. BANG, FLOP! The interesting thing is that it pealed some of the jacket off on the ribs. There was a small piece of jacket under the skin on each side of the ribs. Back then I normally hunted elk with the 300 Weatherby but I was celebrating the fact that I had owned the 257 for 40 years by hunting everything with it that year. That was 2008.
If I hunt elk with the 250-3K I won't take a shot at more than 150 Yards. I may have some 117 or 120 grain bullets. I'll try them at the range if I can find them. It shoots real good groups with the 100's.

As far as 257 diameter bullets go, I shot an elk at over 300 yards with my 257 Weatherby. I used a 100 grain partition. The bullet went between two ribs and created a lot of mayhem to the lungs and heart. BANG, FLOP! The interesting thing is that it pealed some of the jacket off on the ribs. There was a small piece of jacket under the skin on each side of the ribs. Back then I normally hunted elk with the 300 Weatherby but I was celebrating the fact that I had owned the 257 for 40 years by hunting everything with it that year. That was 2008.
If I hunt elk with the 250-3K I won't take a shot at more than 150 Yards. I may have some 117 or 120 grain bullets. I'll try them at the range if I can find them. It shoots real good groups with the 100's.

You can say that again!