Why bother with .25

I bet you already feel more hair growing on your ass! haha

Good choice. I, too, was on the fence for months about going to .25, but when I finally bit the bullet, I was glad I did. I wouldnt go back to .22 for the Condor…….

Good points, all. For me, there are no targets involved. I shoot paper targets only to verify zero and to get an idea of how consistently that particular gun shoots so that I will know I can place a bullet exactly where I need it to go on a live animal. It’s all about the hunting, and paper only serves to confirm consistency of shot placement. So if target shooting is your reason for caliber selection, this discussion isn’t relevant for you.

On a live animal, there are 2 ways to kill it and they require very different shot placement. The first is to bleed the animal to death, so your target is the heart/lung area, which is a large target and easy to hit. The second is to put the animal down by incapacitating its nervous system, so your target is the brain or the spine. Either method will kill an animal, but there are vast differences. For a heart/lung shot, the larger the caliber the better, and the faster the bullet the better. Your goal here is to cause as much tissue damage as possible and to create as large a wound channel as possible to bleed the animal out quickly to the point where it collapses. Although this works well and is the standard method for killing an aninal with a high powered weapon, it means that some meat is lost. It also means it takes a certain amount of time to bring the animal down. But, more importantly, it means you will need a specific amount of power to bring the animal down. While it is possible to bring down a large animal with multiple strikes from a .22, it is far from desirable from a hunting standpoint, as you are not likely to have that much time, nor would you wish to make an animal suffer by perforating it with that many tiny holes before bringing it down. So a large caliber weapon with lots of power is the norm here.

The second method does not require large caliber and does not require any more power than is necessary to punch through the skull once to reliably get at the brain inside. Because energy is highly limited in an air powered gun, for any animal of reasonable size (100 lbs or near that), the brain shot becomes the only real shot of choice for an airgun hunter. There are exceptions; a hollowpoint .308 round travelling at near black powder velocities (~1000 fps) could reliably bring down a 100 lb pig or deer with a heart lung shot; but in my case, I never try for the heart lung. And, of course, when considering small game of rabbit size, the caliber isn’t important because the amount of power is overwhelming in relation to the size of the animal.

Bullet weight is therefore critically important and, as the post above shows, the .25 is capable of carrying far heavier bullets. The .22 will only work with bullets of limited weight, as your barrel’s spin rate determines the maximum weight of bullet it will stabilize. So, each barrel is limited as to the heaviest bullet it will stabilize; so you can’t just make an ultra heavy .22 bullet and expect to match a .25 for power by going heavier and heavier. A point will come when your ultra heavy .22 bullet will tumble in flight and be inherently unstable. Keep in mind that velocity has a role in stability. The slower your bullet (given the same barrel with fixed twist rate), the more unstable your bullet becomes. So if you are worried about stability or start to see keyholing in your targets, push them faster and you may be able to stabilize them.

So, for me, the .25 is vastly preferable to the .22. That having been said, I have taken several dozen large pigs, over 150 lbs, using a 22… this was years ago before the ultra heavy .25 slugs became available. In all that time I can only recall 1 instance where the .22 did not have sufficient power to penetrate into the skull. I have since acquired a DAQ 308, and even with 12″ barrel, it has more than enough power to punch through both sides of a large pig’s skull, so I’ve been very happy with it. I have picked up a .25 Talon, though, for testing purposes to see if I can get it quieter and in a smaller package than the DAQ. Testing will commence after I find time to develop the Talon. An important point in going with a .308 over a .25 is that you can drive the 308 slower with the same amount of energy as a .25 with a lighter bullet… for a quieter gun. This may not be important for some of you, but in hawaii it’s THE consideration as no matter where you go here, there are always houses close by.

Some .25’s are a bit more than “slightly” heavier than any available .22….

Mind you I don’t have a .25 (I want one though) Every post I can remember reading about people who went from .22 to .25 are happy campers. ATP said it best, the larger surface area means the pressure behind the pellet is used more efficiently. Another way of looking at it is this, given the same displacement and all other things being equal, a six cylinder will give more torque than an eight. Why? Larger surface area for the combustion pressure to act upon.

More energy is imparted on larger surface area of the .25 pellet. It’s possible to get a 42 grain pellet moving almost as fast as the heaviest .22s. Heavier and faster is my only logic. 😉 Heavier generally have a higher coefficient. Ask any guy here and they’ll show you the .25 has tested ballistically superior.