Year-Round Varmint Loads

Loading for Versatility

- John Haviland

With some deliberation followed by creativity at the loading bench, a hunter can keep his varmint rifles afield all four seasons of the year. How one, or several, loads assists in keeping a rifle shooting throughout the year depends on the cartridge and what types of hunting in which you partake. A cartridge perfect for a rifleman who spends summer days firing a handful of loads on long shots at marmots and even fewer shots hunting red fox during the winter, might be a less than perfect choice for somebody bent on thinning out ground squirrels infesting farm fields. Further, a rifle heavy of barrel and scope is just the ticket for a prairie dog while sitting at a bench, but a poor pick for a hunter hiking or skiing sagebrush basins between setups calling coyotes.

Some rifles and cartridges make a very versatile pair. My .25-06 Ruger M77 weighs a candy bar’s weight under 9 pounds with a Leupold VX-3i 3.5-10x 40mm scope. That’s a fairly easy load to carry across sagebrush foothills during the winter to hunt coyotes. Over the years I’ve handloaded 75-, 80- and 85-grain bullets at top velocities for that shooting. In recent years, I’ve been shooting Sierra 100-grain GameKing bullets that exit the rifle’s 24inch barrel a touch over 3,400 feet per second (fps). With the GameKings hitting 2 inches above aim at 100 yards, the bullets drop only 2.25 inches at 300 yards, and 12 inches at 400 yards. With that trajectory, I can aim with the crosshairs a sliver over a coyote’s back when it stops way out there at an indeterminable distance while coming to the call, when any movement to take a reading with a rangefinder would spook the coyote.