The Hornady 125 grain XTP
This is a pistol bullet, intended for the .357 magnum and .38 Special calibers, but they work in the .35 Remington as a super varmint scatterer. My guns really prefer the 158 grain bullets over the 125’s in terms of accuracy, but I didn’t have any on hand and decided to just shoot what was on my shelf. I wound these up to 2600 fps and let fly at the fifty yard books, which made quite an explosion. Two shots. one in the top and the other in the bottom, would completely annihilate a phone book, leaving a hole you could darn near stick a fist into. Soggy wads of paper were blown everywhere. These bullets at close range are about as explosive, if not more so, than the plastic tipped varmint bullets, since pistol bullets will expand at a lower speed than the more pointed plastic tip rifle bullets. These were launched about 600-700 fps slower than your typical .223 prairie dog load, however. There was an intact bullet at the bottom of these large holes, which penetrated six inches, destroying the first two books and were found in the very front of the third book. They had expanded nearly flat and had a fair amount of lead still attached. If your rifle will shoot these with decent enough accuracy I guarantee no woodchuck would survive a hit with one of the 125’s, and placement doesn’t have to be that precise to ensure an instant kill. The critter will be torn in half, if not pureed. If your gun will not shoot the 125’s, the 158’s will probably do much better, and the explosive effect is still there. Certainly there are much better varmint guns, but sometimes it is fun to put the old deer rifle to other uses
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this is an article about the 35 remington.........much more from the 35 whelen