At the end of this month, i am going mule deer hunting in eastern oregon. Ukiah unit .
Its a great place to hunt, shots could be point blank to 300 yards or more.
I have never shoot a game animal with a cartridge smaller than a 280 rem.
My Load this year will be from the .257 roberts. Using the Barnes 100 grain tripple shock, over 46 grains of H-414.
This load gives well over 3100fps and is right around MOA in my 20 inch Ruger 77 Mk2 RL.
I have free floated and glass bedded the rifle
and installed an excelent timney trigger, also excelent is the 2.5 X8 Leupold VX3 I put on it in low ruger rings.
In my opinion, this combo gives me great fast handeling for a quick shot, and should also be quite effective on evan the biggest mule deer (there are white tail out there too) in the forest out to 350 yards, or more If I can get a really good rest.
The only negitive is that the H-414 sure dirties up a rifle quick ! I played around in the last few weeks with IMR 4064 and several bullets and results are promising, but for this year The above load is my choice and I am sticking to it ! I will post the load for my back up rifle too ! ...tj3006

Thomas

If you want a clean burning powder try Varget its burn rate is a little faster than IMR 4064 but very close to it, and its temperature insensitive.

For all out speed use H-4831. You will need a drop tube to get the most powder possible in there. I ended up with 52 grains in one of my 257R rifles. It was good for 3300 and pennies.

That was a long time ago. I have learned some things. High pressure loads eat barrels. Super fast bullets disintigrate on impact. The difference in trajectory between a 28-2900 fps load and a 3300 fps load is of no consequence in real life hunting. 3300 fps bullets at close range destroy whole hams on your buck.

See my post below for more thoughts. Next year I plan on shooting a 308 with a 180 gr Remington RN bullet. Check the bullet performance chart for data on that bullet in the post below.

PS: In the Bob, 39 gr 4060 and a 100 grain speer was bughole accurate in my rifle. 2900 fps, low pressure, low recoil, trajectory close enough you could never tell the difference between it and the screamer loads.

If you get around to using IMR 4064 I have found that a load of 35.0 grains with a Sierra 117 grain flat base is accurate out of my Remington Classic. I haven't run it across a chronograph but I don't think it is going to give you maximum speed. Just info for you to ponder.

I tried the Barnes X bullets in this rifle but they just wouldn't group for me.

I use 45.0 gr of h4350 and 120 partitions in my 257's.. with a 24" bbl it gives 2850 fps & 2790 fps in a 20"