I started both of my daughters out hunting deer with a tang safety Ruger 77 RSI in .243. We shot several big Nebraska whitetails and several more desert mule deer with that little rifle, and I used it to shoot a couple of nilgai one year while I was helping a friend in south Texas with a wildlife management plan. We never lost an animal, and I can only remember one big mule deer buck that stayed on his feet long enough to take a second shot. I loaded all of the ammo--either 95-grain Partitions or 95-grain Ballistic Tips. Probably shot at least a dozen feral hogs on the ranch down here, all of them big ones. After I built the younger daughter a 7mm-08, I finally sold the .243 because no one was shooting it--still wish that I hadn't done that.
