Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Tell me about your experience afield w/ the 250-3000, and AI

Took out an old Savage 99 for antelope and it worked beautifully with 87gr Speer Hot Cores. Bang, flop. Rebarreled a Savage 11F with a 250 Savage barrel this year so I can shoot the longer bullets, looking forward to how well it will do.

Don't really see a need for the AI, myself.. maybe if I was hunting monster muleys or elk with it. But I'd probably just switch to a 284 or 308 for those.

I really like the AI performance, and it would be a nice SAAMI round if it fed well, and it might I don't know. Yet, for the use intended, I think a simple 250 would be nice not having to form brass. Not a big deal, but simple is often good.

Thanks for the report, I hear good things on those little hot cores in 87. Prolly many 14" twisted savages is why they get used, as well as their effectiveness.

Agreed, a light mannlicher would be sweet. Also, I like about anything from 6mmBR to 7/08, but mostly using 6-6.5s right now, but no 25s. It is sandwiched nicely in between those rounds.

I've had only one 250 Savage (Ruger 77 RSI) and am on my fourth 257 Roberts. I like(d) them both (as has been pointed out, the Rob and 250 Ai are the same cartridge). Both cartridges kill well (duh), but the Roberts is my favorite of the two and I plan on using my 257 to elk hunt this year stoked with 115 Partitions.

My wife is going to use her Roberts stoked with 100 gr. TSX on elk this year...
Wouldn't be the first one she's doinked with the Bob...
Ingwe

Ray, that was a great story! Thanks for sharing that one.

Anyone using the bob in short actions? Kimber Montana? Is accuracy adversely affected when bullets are seated to fit mag?

Will the Roberts hang with the 250 and AI, in accuracy? What brass are you guys using for the 257s?

+1 on Ray's post.

Interesting story Ray

"We hauled about 30 or so mules to Colorado every year from our Texas ranch and hunted elk then sold the mules at Chimney Rock when we came out. The Colorado packers would be waiting for us.."

2 years ago we camped at Chimney rock campground/ store/ diner and hunted the hills of Chimney rock. All of the big bucks were out in the evenings on Indian property, very few were on the ajoining lands.

I am thinking of saving for a Montana in 257 roberts, but may hold out for a 25-06 for the extra umph. I have a heavy bbl ruger 25-06 and like the caliber. Is the longer actioned montana much more weight? Their website bunches them together for weight....

Allen

65BR,

The Bob works fine in short actions, and has since the Remington 722 came out. In all short actions that I know of (and I have shot a bunch of various makes, both factory and custom) the throat is cut the correct length for the magazine. It will shoot right with the .250 AI in both velocity and accuracy if the barrel and chamber job are of equal quality.

JB, I will have to give the Montana Bob top consideration in the future knowing the throating will do fine. Be cheaper than a custom or close to it.

Thanks.

I'm looking for a 250 barrel for my Ruger lefty M77. I put away my Savage 14 before ever shooting it.

http://ershawbarrels.com/pricelist/pricelist.asp
Here you go.

Read "Elk Tactics" by Don Laubach if you want to have some fun. 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.

Wow, reincarnation must be real after more than ten years.

Bang....flop.

I have only actually seen a 250 Savage used by one man, a good friend of mine. He killed 3 antelope with it, all with 100 grain factory rounds. (I believe they were made by Federal, but I am not 100% certain)
All 3 kills were good and one was very good....a "half-stepper", where the little buck tried to take a step and fell. The other 2 went about 15-20 yards and then fell. But he over reached when he killed a rag-horn bull elk with it. That took 4 rounds, and we polished it off with a shot from my 303 British after we caught up with it. He had 5 round in his Savage and fired all 5, with 4 hits. I gave him my 303 so he could get the killing shot into it. The 303 bullet was a 180 grain Speer and that one went clear through and logged on the skin on the other side of the chest. The elk went about 150 yards total after the 2nd 3rd and 4th hits. For some reason he used the Winchester factory ammo with 87 grain bullets on the elk, even though he used the heavier 100 grain bullet on the antelope. All 4 rounds showed very shallow penetration and one that hit the shoulder blade didn't even get into the lungs. Since then he's used it with hand-loaded ammo and likes the 115 grain Nosler, but all I know about his kills with them are what he's told me, because since he started hand-loading for the rifle I have not been with him on another kill with his old 99 Savage.

My daughter and both grand sons have killed multiple elk with their 257 Roberts. All were killed with Nosler Partitions and Barnes TSX bullets and all were killed well and penetration was always OK. The 250 Savage with proper hand-loads is not far behind the 257 Roberts, so I am sure the 250 Savage would be OK if correct bullets were used, but shooting very small bullets for larger game is a shot for an expert, not a beginner.
For deer I think the 250 is as good as any other shell. For elk............well ...........you had better understand the "inside of the elk" and you better put the bullet exactly where it needs to go. Elk are big, so good bullet placement is not hard to do if you are not trying to do it from too far away to be ethical. ABut ahit with a 250 "around the edges" of the lungs or through the liver may give you one of those follow-ups that you will remember for many years.......and not fondly.

Are the small rifles used with success? Sure. At times and by some. We killed cattle with a 22 LR in the slaughter house, but because it works under perfect conditions would not qualify it as a good buffalo gun.

As for me, I think of the 24s and the 25s as very good deer rifles, but an expert elk hunter's elk rifle. I live in the middle of elk country so for me, if the shot is not perfect I can walk away and come back tomorrow, or next week or next month and sometime up to 2 month later, and "coming back" involves about a 20 minute drive. I can hunt them for 10-11 weeks each year so walking away is no big deal for me. For those that need to take time off work, travel a long way and spend a lot of cash on an elk hunt, walking away is not something they are going to want to do. So I would not recommend a 24 or a 25 cal for many hunters unless they are very disciplined, very ethical and excellent marksmen.

Some may disagree. And they can if they like, because it's their money, their tags and their hunt.

Nuf-said.

I have had two. One was a Winchester Model 54 and the other a Ruger M77 Ultralight with the tang safety. The Model 54 had been rebarreled and I ended up selling it to my brother. I still have the Ruger though. It's a great little round and I have shot a lot of pigs and foxes with it. My favourite bullet is the 100gn Hornady SP with H4350. I have tried H4895 and Varget but I always got the highest velocity and good groups with the slower powder despite the 20 inch barrel. I didn't take it out last year as I hunted with some newer rifles but I may have to take a meat doe with it this year.

The 250-3000 is a gem of a cartridge. I would not do a 250AI now and instead would go 25 Creedmoor, brass would be a simple necking up or down proposition and I have heard a 30 degree neck is more uniform in pressure than a 40 but do not have any hard facts to back that up.

The improved versions have almost identical powder capacities to the 08 case and only about 3-5 grains less than the x 57mm case. All of them seem just about ideal from 22 to 7mm in bore diameter and do 90% of what the 06 based cases do.

I got my first rifle chambered in 250-3000 about 50 years ago, an early 1920's vintage Savage 99G. Back then there were four common factory loads, two from Remington and two from Winchester. Remington cataloged two 100 grain loads, a round point Core-Lokt (RNCL) and the same 100 grain Pointed Soft Point (PSP) that they sell today. Winchester cataloged an 87 grain PSP and the same 100 grain Silvertip (ST) that they sell today.

Even 50 years ago the 250-3000 was mostly a handloader's cartridge, since it falls into the same dual-purpose category as the 243 and 244/6MM, a 75 grain factory load intended for shooting varmints might have helped it regain and retain more popularity.

After a hiatus of several years, Savage reintroduced the 250-3000 with a 1-10" ROT in 1970/71 and continued to catalog it in the Model 99 until 1981/82. During that same period of time, Ruger made their Model 77 in 250-3000, but I don't think that those rifles were a regular cataloged item until the 250-3000 was added to the 77 RSI in 1983/84. Other than Ruger and Savage, the only other American manufacturers that cataloged rifles in 250-3000 were Remington in the 1984 700 Classic and the Winchester/USRA Lightweight Carbine in 1987. For some unknown reason, Winchester/USRA made those rifles with a 1-14" ROT instead of the then current 1-10" ROT standard.

I think that the 250-3000 is a nice cartridge if you're a handloader, not so much if you're not.

From a practical perspective, I don't think that the 250-3000 is any better than the 243 or 6MM REM for any purpose that a person would use those cartridges for, but rifles and factory ammo in 250-3000 are generally less common and more expensive than 243s.

I have rechambered a couple of 250-3000 rifles to 250AI, but it never fed well in my Ruger 77 RSI, so I got a replacement barrel and rechambered it to 25 Souper. The 25 Souper feeds smoothly and they provide the same level of performance, so it is my preferred choice between the two. I rechambered a Savage 99 CD from 250-3000 to 250AI, and then on to 25-284 in order to maximize its performance potential.

I've owned two: a German .250-3000 double rifle built in the 1920s and a Remington Custom Shop Model 7 with a laminated Mannlicher-style stock. I took one deer with the Model 7. One shot (100 grain Remington factory load) through the lungs. Deer walked about 40 feet and keeled over. Bullet went clear through. Can't ask for better performance than that.

The .250 can be a very accurate round and is a great starter round for young shooters because of its light recoil. A lot of early Savage Model 99s in .250 have slow twist barrels that won't stabilize some of the longer 100 grain bullets. Neither of my rifles had that issue, but they were not Savage 99s.

You can do far worse.