Originally Posted by
Carlsen Highway
You guys do make hunting a technical experience. A .25/06 is an excellent hunting cartridge for deer. I have more drop in the tracks kills with a .25/06 (and the .243) than any other. A .25/06 with 115 or 117grains bullets, either interlocks or SST's is a stone cold killer on deer, and coupled with light recoil, about the same as a 6.5x55, is a very friendly rifle to shoot.
The .25/06 Remington is one of the perfect deer rifles for New Zealand.
AS for velocity in a short 20 inch barrel; who is a Girl Guide here and cant carry a 24 inch barrelled rifle? I never did understand what the loss two or four inches of barrel was suppossed to achieve in the short rifle fad nowadays. I have had 20 inch barreled rifles and even an 18 and a 17 inch and it never made that much difference to me to be perfectly honest.
(None of this need concern a Long Range Shooter, who I sort of equate with artillerymen rather than hunters. I also imagine them wearing berets, I am not sure why. So they can recognise each other I suppose.)
As for why is hasn't caught on so much, I can only hazard a guess that it has not simply because its reletively new, only a factory round since 1969, and as such doesnt have much of a track record, plus, compared to new rounds like the 7mm08 and so forth, I just dont think they pushed the round hard marketing wise in NZ. I'm just guessing but I bet they didn't really offer it much to NZ shooters through the seventies, although I would have to go back through the old catalogues to check that out. I mean it took us long enough to get push button telephones forget about a new cartridge.