I am working up some loads for my 25-06 PH barrel and had some strange results. What I'm working with are 75 gr. VMax bullets over IMR 4350. It seemed like the the hotter the barrel got the tighter the group. I shot two five round groups from five different loads from 53 gr. to 56.5 gr. The best results were from the second group @ 53 and both groups @ 56 gr. I think I'm going to do a little more work between 55.5 and 56 to see if I can find a sweet spot, but I'm wondering if RL19 wouldn't be better for the lighter bullet and shorter barrel. Anybody else had experience with a 25-06 in an Encore pistol? Once I get done with my varmint load I'm going to be working on a deer load with 100 gr. BT's and 110 gr. Accubonds.
Rich

That's not at all unusual, but keep in mind that you won't be hunting with a hot barrel. It pays to be consistent in allowing the tube to cool between shot strings.

Also, what forend are you using? The rynite forends have a nasty reputation for causing inconsistencies in accuracy, and the associated expansion of a hot barrel coupled with the forend's shortcomings could be resulting in your groups shrinking with the heating of the barrel.

When the Encore first became available, I ran into occasional inconsistencies from fliers and the dreaded vertical stringing. But a Bellm hinge pin (www.bellmtcs.com) and a custom forend solved all of my problems and put me on the road to much more enjoyable shooting. In fact, some of the loads that I discarded in development were tried again, and many gave much-improved (and highly acceptable!) results.