Hey Paul, Excellent post. Best of luck this Season.

Thoughtful, well-reasoned post, Paul. I also hunt primarily in the south and experienced exactly the same occurrences you uou have. As you can see some tried here tried to do that,and that is to disagree agreeably, but the usual suspect's insecurities you witnessed make these kinds of threads almost a "sport," especially when you get "first the earth cooled" long diatribes that are so far off the mark it's laughable. If you hang here long enough, you'll easily recognize who they are/ jorge

Currently carrying the 115 BT's in the .257 Robt's AI for deer. VERY accurate and on our average sized whitetails should work fine.

A few years ago I wrote up a couple of failures with 150gr .308" BT's in a .30-06 on both antelope and a deer. And 180 BT's in a .300 Win Mag on an elk.

I saw my nephew shoot an antelope at maybe 120 yds with the 150's. Hit the point of the shoulder and blew a hole in the hide and muscle. She was shot again and the bullet went between ribs and blew up the lungs with a small exit wound.
A careful post mortem on the first shot showed that nothing penetrated into the chest cavity.

Nearly the same situation on a fairly large 4x4 Muley,but at 250 yds. Bullet blew a hole on the outside,never penetrated into the chest. Buck was shot again,this time with my .280 and a 150 NP and end of story.

The elk was a REAL shame as it was the shooters 1st chance at a decent bull. Broadside in the open at 300 lasered yds. Saw the bullet impact in basically the right spot; slightly below center of the bull and behind the shoulder. At the shot the bull lost balance and almost dropped to his knees. Then wheeled and trotted into the timber. We had fresh snow and followed a spotty blood trail for several hours until it was lost. Never found him. Unless he went off the Ranch he was never found. The cowboys will usually find winterkills and wounded when working cattle as they retreive the horns.
No luck this time. We later checked the load and it was +3" at 100 as sighted in and three averaged 3050 fps over the Oehler. These were 2001 production slugs.

I do not use BT's on elk. I generally use NP's for everything as I know what they can and can not do. Strange how they will perform great for many yet poorly a small percentage of the time. Puzzling.

FN in MT

WstrnHntr,

My .257 Rbts AI is a 24" HART tube on an old M70 I had sitting in the safe for years in .30-06 that NEVER saw any use. NOT a lt wt combo by any stretch but very accurate. And those little cases look SO SEXY!! All I have tried so far is RL-19 and the 115 BT's. 120 NP's are next on the schedule.

I'm not trying to get the absolute maximum out of the .257 as about all it gets used for is deer. I've never found any deer particularly hard to kill. If I discover anything earthshaking with RL22 I'll let ya know.

FN in MT

Frank in MT,
I use RL22 in my 257AI and am very happy with the results.
I use 53gr. with the Hornady 117SST or the BTSP and get 3080fps from my 24" barrel. Groups average .75" for 3 shots.
Just thought I'd give you my opinion of Rl22 and the AI.

Elk Country

PS. I also am using RL22 (64gr.) in my 30-06 AI with 180gr. bullets and am getting 2900fps with a 24" barrel.
Accuracy is also under 1 MOA.