remingtonman_25_06
Well-Known Member
Would just like to say I know matchkings work on varmints. I am just having some erratic results. Sometimes they blow up, sometimes they act like FMJ's. Here are some of my experiences with them.
I have been experimenting a lot lately with the 100g matchkings out of my 25/06. I went with the accuracy load out of the sierra manual which say 52g of IMR-4350. This load at 100 yards regularly groups in the .4 to .6 range. Average is .5 inch. Velocity is average of about 3250fps over my chrony. I know sierra does not recomend them forhunting purposes, but all the LR hunters use them, and dont have problems with them. I did some expansion test with mine with wet newspaper placed at 100 yards. I shot 3 shots into them and later recovered the bullets. 2 of them blew up so bad that all I found was bits and pieces, the other 1 was a good mushroom. The one mushroom did not retain much weight though. That doesn't bother me, much like B-tips performance. However, I also shoot my milk jugs with B-tips and they will explode and send water flying everywhere. When I hit the jugs with the 100g Matchkings they act like FMJ's and dont have the expansion like they had when I shot into the newspaper. Also tonight, I just got back from a coyote hunt and was successfull. My dad called in a coyote to 101 yards and I was shooting my trusty 25/06 with 100g SMK's. At the shot, the coyote dropped in his tracks. When we walked up to him, it was almost blown in half. These are some of the most recent experiments I have made with the 100g SMK's. From my experiences, they seem to give erratic performance on expansion. Sometiems they will expand rapidly, and sometimes they dont. I have not yet tried them on deer, but I will this coming year if my 25/06 barrel is not worn out by this time. Are my findings out of the ordinary?
I have been experimenting a lot lately with the 100g matchkings out of my 25/06. I went with the accuracy load out of the sierra manual which say 52g of IMR-4350. This load at 100 yards regularly groups in the .4 to .6 range. Average is .5 inch. Velocity is average of about 3250fps over my chrony. I know sierra does not recomend them forhunting purposes, but all the LR hunters use them, and dont have problems with them. I did some expansion test with mine with wet newspaper placed at 100 yards. I shot 3 shots into them and later recovered the bullets. 2 of them blew up so bad that all I found was bits and pieces, the other 1 was a good mushroom. The one mushroom did not retain much weight though. That doesn't bother me, much like B-tips performance. However, I also shoot my milk jugs with B-tips and they will explode and send water flying everywhere. When I hit the jugs with the 100g Matchkings they act like FMJ's and dont have the expansion like they had when I shot into the newspaper. Also tonight, I just got back from a coyote hunt and was successfull. My dad called in a coyote to 101 yards and I was shooting my trusty 25/06 with 100g SMK's. At the shot, the coyote dropped in his tracks. When we walked up to him, it was almost blown in half. These are some of the most recent experiments I have made with the 100g SMK's. From my experiences, they seem to give erratic performance on expansion. Sometiems they will expand rapidly, and sometimes they dont. I have not yet tried them on deer, but I will this coming year if my 25/06 barrel is not worn out by this time. Are my findings out of the ordinary?