Thank you JJ Hack for lending some sanity to this thread. I wouldn't even conisder the 243 a good deer cartridge much less an elk cartridge. One of the reasons is that people choose the 243 because they are intimidated by anything bigger. They are not big fans of practice because of muzzle blast or whatever. So you have a situation where they close both eyes and yank the trigger and hope that the bullet will be guided to the animals vitals by divine intervention.
Last year my brother in law had his wife shoot a 243 for deer season. At the last minute he decided to substitute the 80 gr bullet because she was a little bothered by the recoil. It ended up with her wounding an 8 pt buck
which required several hours of three stooges tracking. This included going out without a flashlight or gun and jumping the deer which then ran even further into the swamp. They finally went back and got a light and a gun and put it out of its misery. Out of fairness I handload for a friend and force him to use 100 gr Hornady interlocks and he has cleanly killed several deer which are shot from a stand about 20 yards away. He practices a lot. I would like to say that Bob Hagel once wrote that you should not use a cartridge that will do the job under ideal conditions, you should use a cartridge which will do the job when everything goes wrong.
Great White North
