I just love these discussions about what it takes to kill a deer sized animal. With some claiming the 257R is minimal and others saying it's just perfect. After I had killed a couple good bucks I thought knew absolutely everything on the subject. I could and would offer opinions about the perfect deer rifle and round. That was a long time ago. I don't know exactly how many deer sized animals I've killed in the last 50 years, but it would be in the hundreds. One thing I learned is that it hard to tell or see any difference in killing power(what ever that is) between a 243 and a 7RM. given similar shot placement on a deer. Sometimes actual,but limited experience, confuses the issue . Once on hunt in California a companion shot a deer just above the knee, the animal ran a few yards and lay down and let the hunter walk up and finish him off. On the same hunt another companion shot a deer several times with a 308 before killing it. Based on this first hand experience it might seem that the .243 is a hell of a deer round, just hit one anywhere and it'll go down, but The .308 really sucks. All I know for sure is if you put a good bullet at a reasonable velocity through the heart/lung area a deer/antelope etc., the animal is not long for this world.
