Planning a S TX Sika hunt for this fall and just wondered if anybody has any experience with the 25-35 on Sika. I love to hunt with the oldies and this seems like a decent choice but maybe I'd be better off with the 30-30.

Since that's an unknown load one should section a bullet, chrongraph it and shoot it into media at least. Right now someone is aiming at a deer with a .22 RF Magnum so almost anything will take anything.

It's not a powerful cartridge anyway. I would load up my own and crank them out with the ideal bullet for the range in that gun.

One can load ammo without the dies for that cartridge. Just buy new brass, chamfer it and seat the bullets with some other die. Put a nice 14 degree chamfer in the necks and the bullets will go in straight.

99 - I've 2 old boxes of factory lds for the rifle but they're for display only. All ammo for shootin is mnfbyme. My magic potion for this rifle is the 75gr Speer FP pushed along with 26.0gr IMR 3031. Pure magic on mulies inside 100 yds. For the Sika I'll probably go with the 117 gr Hdy Round nose.

Pancho, the sikas I've seen in Maryland were very small deer. Your 25-35 should work fine on them. If your using it on mulies it will certainly slay them little sikas. Good luck and have fun.

I have used my Win Model 94 in .25-35 on southern whitetail deer and it works. Shot placement is very critical with this round and I never took a shot over 75 yards. This is with factory Winchester ammo.

I haven't shot a deer with my Win 94 x 25-35, but the rifle has been with me on several hunts for the smallish muleys and blacktails I hunt in inland southern California. I use the Hornady 117 grainer atop 27.0 grains of WW-760, yielding about 2175 FPS in the 20" barrel. I will restrict shots to 100 yards, which is no disadvantage in the brushy environment I hunt within.

The velocity bracket of the 25-35 and 30-30 is an easy one for conventional core-and-jacket bullets to behave themselves within. Good controlled expansion results with these combinations, and I suspect this is one key to the carbine/30-30's wide popularity.

Atkinson, Sr killed a dozen or so elk with a .25-35 so I reckon it can manage a Sitka deer a tenth that size.

The Remington and Hornady 117 RNs are designed specifically for the .25-35 so expansion should not be a problem.

Like you say my dad killed a ton of elk with one and I have killed both elk and lots of deer with the 25-35..A 117 gr. bullet at 2300 FPS is deadly in the heart lung area at up to 200 yards, but you have very little room for error..I pretty much confine my shots to 100 yards with the 25-35...sweet littlel rifles.