msmith57
Well-Known Member
I've killed plenty with my 22-250 large 300+# white tail, Mulies & Elk always use 53 gr BTHP AT 4300fps accurate to 1000 yes in my savage 110 26" heavy barrel. One shot is all it takes
22-250 for deer?
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Groot
Well-Known Member
Tagging in because I'm considering a 22 creed for occasional use on deer....
what about a fast twist 22-250 shooting 70-90 grainers? I know I know most of the real heavy ones are target bullets.. some may have already been mentioned but what about the 70 grain accubond? Barnes 70 and 78 grain TSX? Barnes 77 grain LRX are a few heavier bullets that i thought would be good picks.
what about a fast twist 22-250 shooting 70-90 grainers? I know I know most of the real heavy ones are target bullets.. some may have already been mentioned but what about the 70 grain accubond? Barnes 70 and 78 grain TSX? Barnes 77 grain LRX are a few heavier bullets that i thought would be good picks.
thwatson2
Well-Known Member
I shoot 50 grain blitzKing in my 220 swift. It will and does kill deer. Shot placement is important. I upper neck or head shoot, but this year dropped a nice buck thru lower neck and it took out the opposing shoulder. My thought is: if I can't make my shot, then don't shoot. There are more deer in the woods!
We kill a lot of does at 600 yards with our 22-250 75 gr Bullets but we practice for that shot all the time
They used 32-20 rifles back in the day (The Jordan Buck). If you can kill one with a 32-20 , you can kill them with anything. Just a question of how consistent your accuracy is. I here people all the time saying what's too small to kill a deer. I've never seen one run from a head shot, no matter the distance. Many a deer have been killed with a 22 rim fire and many have been lost , wounded with a 300.
It's not about the gun. It's the shooter.
I've used bolt action 223's and 22-250's for several years now. I hunt middle Georgia so the average buck is 145lbs and the average doe is 115lbs. I've kept my shots under 200 yards and usually try and put the bullet in the upper neck area. I use a factory 75gr gold dot for my Remington 700 223 and I use factory federal 55 gr power point in my Remington 700 22-250. I've never lost a deer to either the 223 or the 22-250. Most have fallen where I shot them but a few ran less than 50 yards. The blood trail was hard to find but it was there.
nicholasjohn
Well-Known Member
I found that the 64-grain Winchester Power Point stabilizes just fine in a 14-inch twist 22-250. So does the 70-grain Speer semi-spitzer, and both kill deer well. I road-tested that pretty thoroughly on whitetails years ago. I shot more animals with the Winchester, because it shot more accurately in my particular rifle. Both bullets killed well, and neither made big holes. No blood-shot meat to speak of - just a dead deer with a hole through its lungs and a nickel-sized exit wound. Oddly, without extensive damage, all deer went down on the spot.
I also tried a custom bullet that was available at the time, from a company in Canada called Blue Point. They were a bonded core design, and I tried them in 60, 65, and 70 grains. Only the 60-grain bullet would stabilize, and groups were nothing special. I killed a couple of deer with it, and results were just like with the other bullets. I had more of the Winchester & Speer bullets, so that is what I used for the next several years.
I had a buddy in southern Oregon who used to use the 22-250 on blacktail deer, especially when his wife started hunting with him. He just used the garden-variety Sierra softpoints, in 55-grains. He told me that he saw no need to use anything heavier, or with a stiffer jacket - these worked just fine. The deer there aren't very large, and neither were the does I was shooting in Pennsylvania. I was careful to only take rib-cage shots, and never tried to shoot one right on the shoulder. He said that he never cut it that fine, and they shot their deer "in the chest" and didn't worry about whether or not they hit bones. He said it worked just like when they shot them with the 25-06 he favored for larger animals.
An added bonus I remember was that I could watch the deer fall down through the scope, due to lack of recoil. That was a little different for me at the time. If I had it to do again, I would probably try the 60-grain Nosler partitions, like somebody else recommended in this thread. I also saw that somebody liked the 55-grain Barnes, and there's a factory load available with those. Most of the other monolithic bullet designs are available in this diameter, and would probably work well. I doubt that anything much heavier than 55 grains would stabilize in the 14-inch twist, though. Factory loads would be the least expensive way to find that out, and you wouldn't be left with the rest of a 100-bullet box of bullets that don't work in your rifle.
Groot
Well-Known Member
What 75 grain bullets are you typically running?
amadjuster
Active Member
75 AMax running over 3300fps
Killed a ton of deer in the old days with 22-250 using 53 gr Sierra BTHP.....never over 300+/- yds
Uboatrobert
Active Member
I have a friend who uses a 22-250 w/70 gr. bullets and shoots all of his deer in the head.
Tex_Hunter
Well-Known Member
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Gotta love these "friend of a friend" stories that get put forward as "evidence" in all of these threads.
Here's the glaring problem that all of these stories have in common: You didnt recover either deer, you didnt even find a blood trail, so you have no idea where he hit it... or if he even hit it at all. All you have to go off of is that he said he hit it, but yeah, it was totally his choice in gun. Your two anecdotal stories are absolutely the rule not the exception in spite of the thousands of deer killed with .224cal every year.
Based on the fact that these were the same gun/hunter, the first thing I would do is tell you friend/family to learn how to shoot. Now he's just going to go get the latest Fudd approved shoulder cannon and continue to wound/miss deer. SMH
Dont let that get in the way of your "I know better than everyone else, bigger is always better" rant. 22-250 and 243 with a proper controled expansion deer appropriate bullet are near as makes no difference the same thing.
nicholasjohn
Well-Known Member
I've hunted extensively with slug guns in the upper Midwest, and I've found that the big 12-gauge slugs ( which weight well over an ounce ) deflect terribly on twigs and brush. NOTHING is impervious to deflection, and if I need to thread a bullet through a hole in the brush I think I could accomplish that more handily with an accurate rifle than with a slug gun. The concept of the "brush-buster" rifle with a big bullet is a myth.
