Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting First Year with 243

Below are my only three experiences with the .243—my sons’ deer kills over the last 18 months. The .243 worked perfectly.

Nov. 2017: Barnes VOR-TX 80gr TTSX out of a 20” bbl: per chrono, roughly 2,920 fps impact velocity (at 50 yds). Deer dropped where it was hit and died within about 20 seconds. Bullet went through about 2-feet of deer, including rib bones and exited.



September 2018 (Youth-only season): Hornady 95gr SST out of a 24” bbl: per chrono, roughly 3,010 fps impact velocity (at 30 yds). Deer dropped where hit, and was dead when approached seconds later. Bullet went through about 2-feet of deer front-to-back and stopped under the hide on the far side.



This is the recovered bullet, next to a 225gr TTSX from my .340 I recovered from the moose in my avatar after going through about 4-feet of moose, including rib bones and a shoulder.



40 minutes later, my younger son got his first deer with shooting sticks at a deer 140 yds away with the .243 Hornady Lite load with an 87gr SST with a MV (per chrono) of 2,577 fps out of a 20” bbl. Impact velocity was about 2,270 fps (less than 1,000 ft-lbs)—i.e., about like a .223. Bullet exited after going laterally through the deer and destroying both lungs. The deer died where shot (could tell by the blood spatter right next to where it lay), and was dead by the 30 seconds or so it took us to get there.







I hunt deer and larger things with bigger calibers, because I can, but I was impressed with the .243’s performance. The .223-level reduced .243 Hornady load was devastating, even at 140 yards.

The cup-and-core SSTs actually seemed to produce better results even though one of them didn’t exit. However, given that there are large black bears (including a reported 600-lb one) and mountain lions in the same place, I might prefer the TTSX loads for my boys—not because they are better on deer, but because they might be better for self-defense on scarier critters around there.