Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles 25-06 vs. 270 for whitetail

The 25/06 and 270 are elk medicine.

If I was looking for a deer cartridge it would be a 250 savage or 257 Bob.

Shod

I like your style!

The 110 gr Barnes in the 270 Winchester (3400-3500 fps) renders the 25/06 obsolete.

I've always heard that the 30/06 is slightly fatter.....and a little slower.

Shod

No point in either one. The .223 is all you ever need. Just ask all the .22 CF fanboys around here. Anything bigger than .224" is just overkill on deer.

Blackheart I have to admit that's one of the bigger "who cares" issues discussed around here...for me anyway.

Not necessarily true. Where you hit them still matters. The last mule deer that I shot with my Whelen (225 gr partition) dropped straight down without taking a step. My guide said he'd never seen one go down so fast.

The last whitetail that I shot with my .257 Weatherby (100 gr. partition) went 10 ft. Which proves nothing except it is hard to generalize.

I am with Bob, the 270 beats the 25-06 at its own game.

I think Prairie Goat and/or his pop have been having good luck with the 85 tsx at something like 3800 fps on deer and lopes.

I fixed it for you

Not that the 25-06 isn't a great cartridge, I've just never liked it. It really is at its best with a 24" barrel, and I'd sooner use a 22" bbl.

Really, were I wanting a 25 cal for deer it'd be a Roberts.

Otherwise, 270 all the way...

My .45-70 may not kill like lightning but the 5x5 bull elk I shot with it (213 yards) never took a step and the buck I shot (197 yards) left a blood trail that looked like someone had sloshed blood out of a bucket. Of course the buck's "trail" was only about 10 feet long...

When it came time for me to become a rifle shooter, I realized I needed at least one chambering that I needed to despise without any logic or reason. Otherwise, I would not be a real shooter. I already had one that I clung to without hesitation. That was the 30-06, so that was out. 270 WIN was an easy choice. I have spent the last 30-some years hating on the 270 for no good reason.

As to the 25-06, I kind of fell into that one. A buddy was getting too old to hunt and I bought his favorite deer rifle and it just happened to be 25-06. I have been impressed with it. I'm 56, and figured that it was time to start exploring things smaller than 30-somethings. the 25-06 with 117 grain Hornady SPBT's did a nice job on a doe this year. I'm satisfied.

I will say this, if you have an unrealistic and illogical bias against 270 WIN, then you will have a lot of fun taking cheap 270 WIN brass and resizing it to 25-06. There is just something deeply fulfilling knocking the gay out of that brass.

"Knocking the gay out of that brass"

That is some funny stuff right there!!!!

They are both good cartridges I have owned, hunted and killed deer with both.

That said, I still favor the 270 Winchester over the 25-06.

Id suspect both where the bullets placed and which bullet you used , and the hunters knowledge of the games anatomy,has a huge effect on results , Ive used both the 35 whelen and 45/70 on both deer and elk in the past and had very good results.
now Ive seen several deer and elk shot with a 257 Roberts and 270 Winchester rifles also and the same things hold true, place your shots well and use a decent bullet and any of the mentioned calibers work, pure physics suggests a larger more massive projectile, that expands but maintains most of its physical integrity has some potential benefits in causing more consistent and deeper wound damage, on the larger animals but Ive seen a 257 Roberts dump an elk from 200 yards, in seconds after bullet impact, quite convincingly and the same thing happen with my 45/70 so I'm not overly concerned with head stamps, just accuracy and consistency.

The 25 will never trump a 270. Just sayin'...

W

We'll put !!!

well, the .270 shoots a bullet that is 7.78% larger than the .25-06, so, you should get 7.78% better blood trails.



I've killed three deer with the .25-06, and five with the .270, and the .270's have all been bang flops. The deer ran more with the .25-06. Which is probably because I've historically loaded the .25-06 fairly mild, and I firewalled the .270 with bullets that expand easily. They don't go anywhere when their heart is mostly disconnected from everything.

But as a practical matter, I doubt caliber makes a lot of difference between the two. Individual bullet/load performance and shot placement will make a bigger difference.

I don't see talking about the .24-06 and the .35 Whelen here as derailing the thread. If someone wants to compare the .25-06 to the .270 then extending the range downward and upward with cartridges of the same powder capacity should make clearer the differences.

I'm ok with that, let it evolve....