Here's what I'm gonna do. We put 100 deer in a pen. I am gonna shoot them in the lungs with my .243 and any bullet you pick. I will give you 1000 dollars for every one that lives. You give me 10 dollars for every one that dies.
Let's see who comes out ahead. Anyone willing?
Thought not.
Funny post! Personally I don't hunt deer in pens but would take bets that I could do that using a 22 magnum. I have used the 243 over the years on many deer and never lost one. On the other hand comparing the 243 to larger cartridges and considering the number of times a deer made it 100 yards after being hit well with a 243 compared to a 7-08, 308 or 7x57 I figure the ratio is 3 to 1. About the same for not leaving a good blood trail. At my deer lease north of Guthrie Texas which is also crawling with feral hogs and a heaping helping of coyotes leaving a deer overnight usually means you end up with a pile of well cleaned bones. The lease has a lot of what is called "shinnery" which is a sort of Oak tree bush that gets pretty tall but mostly less than 4 feet tall, getting through it is a chore for a person. Not so hard for a deer or a feral hog. If a deer gets a hundred yards back into this stuff and it gets dark while you are looking for it that pile of bones will be all you have in the morning. The reason I didn't have any issues when using a 243 is because I only took neck and high shoulder shots. I killed some big hogs with that rifle also. Over the years on that lease we had a bunch of guys lose deer simply because they treated the 243 like it was a good all around deer rifle which it is not. In open country it works well enough but the sometimes thin to non existent blood trails cost these guys a lot of deer. One of the guys that only used his 243 for 2 years before he went to a 308 shot 11 deer and recovered 8. And a couple of the deer we recovered needed some serious tracking skills to find. In the next 6 years he never lost a deer because they didn't generally go very far and if they did the 150 grain Core Lokt's left a nice bloody trail for him to follow. I used to hunt a lot in Wyoming and there the 243 did pretty good on both Antelope and Mule deer as you could usually see which way they went or never got out of sight before going down. May sound odd but I got the distinct impression that Mule deer were not as hard to kill as Whitetails. Another point, mostly a rifle in 243 costs the same as one in 7-08 or 308, neither is known as a hard kicker either so why not hedge your bet and get the bigger round?
I've killed something over 200 whitetails in my life. Several dozen of those with a .223, .22-250 and .243 and could count on the fingers of one hand the number that made it 100 yards or farther after being shot. In fact, I've never had one make it farther than 75 - 80 yards with the .243 or any of the .22 centerfires and the majority were down in less than 50. Pretty much the same as when I use my .30-30. The .30 cals. do generally leave better blood trails but I've found I rarely need a blood trail anyway.
