The .25-35 Winchester, along with the .30-30 Winchester, was introduced in the Model 94 lever-action rifle in August 1895. Those were the first two sporting cartridges of American design to be loaded with smokeless powder. The Model 94 had been introduced the previous year, but only in .32-40 and .38-55, both loaded with black powder at the time.

This buck is one of several whitetails the author has taken with his Model 94 in .25-35.

The .30-30 case is basically the .38-55 necked down for a .30-caliber bullet, and the .25-35 is a necked-down version of it. Other members of the same family are the .32 Winchester, .22 Savage High-Power, .219 Zipper and .375 Winchester. Industry maximum average chamber pressure for the .25-35 and .30-30 is 38,000 copper units of pressure (cup), but I would not be surprised to learn that the ammunition companies have backed off on the throttle a bit out of respect for rifles now celebrating 100 years or more of use.

As far as I know, Winchester has offered only two .25-35 factory loadings: 117-grain softnose and FMJ bullets at a muzzle velocity of 2,250 fps and delivering 970 ft-lbs of energy at 100 yards. Depending on the bullet weight it is loaded with, the .30-30 delivers 1,300 to 1,400 ft-lbs at 100 yards, and Winchester's current loading of the .38-55 is rated at 674 ft-lbs at that range (the old high-velocity loading of the .38-55 churned up 1,055 ft-lbs at 100 yards).

Back in the old days the ammunition manufacturers spent a lot of time and money developing cartridges of the same caliber and similar performance levels that differed just enough in dimension to prevent them from being used in a competitor's rifle. The .25-36 Marlin and .25 Remington were loaded with 117-grain bullets, and while the Marlin cartridge was slower than the .25-35 Winchester, the Remington cartridge was actually faster at 2,350 fps. Unlike the .25-35, the .25 Remington case was made rimless, so it would feed smoothly in a couple of Remington rifles, the Model 8 autoloader and the Model 14 pump gun.

There was a time when no small number of American woodsmen considered the .25-35 adequate for use on deer, and it may have enjoyed even more popularity among European hunters who used it in drillings and other types of combination guns. Over there it is known as the 6.5x52R.

In this age of deer cartridges powerful enough to stop a cement truck in its tracks and scopes as big as sewer pipes, very few hunters would look twice at the mild-mannered little cartridge. This is a bit sad since it works quite nicely on whitetails inside 100 yards and most are killed no farther away from the muzzle than that. When shopping for either factory ammo or bullets for reloading, the owner of a rifle in .25-35 Winchester will find pickings quite slim, but enough are there to get the job done.