Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting You can't kill a deer around here with THAT!

Reporting in from south Alabama here.

First the one thing that the local online forum experts and behind the sporting goods counter guys here in Bama are certain of is that the .243 will not consistently kill deer. Oh sure they acknowledge that deer have been killed by a 243 but quickly add that a 22 short can possibly kill a deer but that doesn't make it a good deer round. They are fond of saying that if you hunt with a 243 sooner or later you will lose a deer just because you are using a 243. I would have thought shot placement would play a part in losing a wounded deer but apparently not. Nope, sooner or later a deer hit squarely in the lungs will just refuse to die simply because the bullet came from a 243. You see there is this concept called "Margin of Error." I'm no expert on it but apparently it works like this. The bigger and more powerful cartridge I shoot a deer with the farther away from the vitals I can hit him without any fear of losing him. Rifles like a 338 ultra mag allow you to shoot a deer any where and the resulting hydrostatic pulse wave will still race through their veins and arteries exploding their heart, lungs and brain. As you go down in power the kill zone shrinks accordingly. By the time you get down to a 30-30 or 243 the sure kill vital zone on a deer has shrunk to the brain pan and the asending loop of the Aorta. Any hit outside these areas with such underpowered rounds are a complete 50/50 crap shoot as to whether the animal will be recovered or not. That could be important info for your book.

Also, I foolishly based my past rifle purchases on the fact that almost all of my shot's would be less than 150 yards on Alabama deer rarely weighing more than 170 lbs. With that as my guide I thought short action calibers like 243, 7mm-08 or 308 hurling 100 to 150 grain bullets at 2700 to 2800 fps from light weight 22 inch barreled rifles would be ideal. WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!!! Thankfully I have been educated that one must not base rifle purchases on what you will be doing with it 99.9% of the time but instead on what you might do with it once. So, while to the inexperienced hunter, it may seem odd for me to spent the next 15 years shooting small deer at 100 yards with a 338 magnum. I as a newly "In The Know" hunter just brush aside the looks on their uninformed faces, confident in the knowledge that the brown bear hunt I might go on one time before I die will have made this caliber the right one for all my needs.