Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Goodbye 243 I'm done

Your coyotes must be tougher than the ones I shoot! Haven't had a bit of trouble killing them with my 22-250 and I seldom load to top fps.

For years I was a confirmed .243 hater because of all the deer I saw wounded with it. I think it was a combination of handing a .243 to a beginner, plus the guys that never shoot their rifles because they're scared of recoil. Throw into the mix the crappy big box store ammo that most shoot with an already marginal round and you've got a recipe for wounded deer. I'll begrudgingly admit that in the hand of a competent marksman shooting good bullets (nosler partition or barnes TTSX) that the .243 is adequate for deer. I don't see the 6.5 creedmoor as it's replacement, the 6.5 is in a different class to me.

I'll disagree with the 243 not being a prairie dog round. It's an excellent long range prairie dog round when it's twisted right and shooting high B.C. bullets. It's a bit much for general use but when the ranges get way out there it'll do what no 22-250 will do.

A 243 isn't of any interest to me unless it's twisted for the long bullets which means at least an 8 twist. If I were building one now it would have a 7 twist so I could shoot the 115 DTAC, 110 SMK, and 108 ELD-M.

I won't say they're any tougher. I use the 223, 22-250, and 243 for coyote hunting, and have killed more with the 223 than anything else. I like shooting different rifles, and different cartridges. As I said, I've used a 223 more than anything else, but the 22-250 has it over the 223.......just like the 243 has it over the 22-250. I would be perfectly happy being able to use only one of those 3 for coyote hunting, if it ever boiled down to that. It's all about putting the bullet where it needs to go anyway, which brings us back to why the 243 is as good a choice for deer hunting as any, as long as you're able to just that.

I swear I don't get some of the shyt I read on here. With all the chest pounding I see on here about what great shots everyone is, how they shoot so much more than average Joe, are expert handloaders and supposedly such great hunters that they're practically Daniel Boone, Jim Bridger and Buffalo Bill all rolled into one, yet they can't kill deer dependably with a .243. What gives ? I've killed a pile of deer with cheap azz Wal-Mart .243 factory loads from Remington, Federal and Winchester as Well as Handloads with 100 gr. Hornady IL, 95 gr Hornady SST's and 85 gr. Sierra BTHP's with nary a hitch or complaint. But then I've killed another big pile with a .223 and ordinary 55 gr. sp's with zero problems or comlaints either. Could it be that some of the expert hunters and marksmen here just ain't quite as good as they claim ? Nah, couldn't be. I must just be lucky I guess.

Yep, you are just lucky cuz all these other guys are the [bleep]. They told me so. If only we were from Montana...

I agree with blackheart, the only deer I saw shot were the ones I shot in my teens.
And all I ever used was a .243, out of the 12 deer I killed with with they all
Dropped immediately with a behind the shoulder shot.

Being ignorant as hell I thought thats how it must be all the time for everyone.
That is until I started reading more hunting stories.

The first deer that ran on me was with the .270, shot behind the shoulder.

To All,

My sole problem with the .243WCF is, using JSP/JHP deer-loads on coyote-sized game, that it tends to make relatively a large hole on the far side of the pelt & that isn't easy to patch. Nonetheless all of the factory fodder are good killers on yotes/WT.
(The opposite is the PBCB .30 caliber that I load to the "old-school" 32-40WCF ballistics of about 1400FPS, which passes through both sides of a WT or coyote leaving twp small holes & does a competent job of killing both species cleanly, given a decent/well-aimed shot.)

One wouldn't think that a 170 grain lead bullet only .08 caliber larger at 1400FPS would do as well as a 87/100 grain .243 jacketed SP/HP bullet at twice the velocity on the same species. Nonetheless, that has been my observation over >4 decades.

yours, tex

I have shot one deer w .243 win. Right behind one shoulder, and out behind the other.
Did not drop at the shot.
In the elk vid posted.........the long range one...........didn't that hit the spine?
Anything folds em when ya do that.

Used .35 rem on two other deer, clipped shoulders on way through. Neither dropped at the shot.
A few w 44 magnum, one did drop.
Bunch w shotgun........only a few dropped.

As long as the deer drops nearby, I'd call it good enough. Decent red to the flop is also cool.

This will be my 53rd year deer hunting and have seen 500 pound black bears killed with the lowly .243 so for me deer are a no brainier.

I will say the deer that ran when shot with a .270 only went 30 yards or so,
and the blood trail looked like some one was walking along and dumping
paint along the ground.

I've really been really lucky! But I'm also young and have a lot of time to mess up yet.

need to find a remington 700 adl or a bdl from the 70's, used a 670 Winchester for hunting long ago one of them would be cool!

I have a buddy that bought a Sako .243 in the mid '60s and has probably killed a few truck loads of W/T and mule deer with it. I was hunting with him 20 or so years ago when I heard him shoot in the last few minutes of the day. He hit the deer and knocked it down but, could not get another clear shot so the deer got away. The next season his sil killed a buck that had a wound that was just over the lungs and under the spine. He figures that was the deer he shot the previous season.
I always thought I'd like to have a 6mm because, IMO, it is a little better design than the .243 but, there's no contest on which brass is easier to find.

.257 Roberts was developed as a varmint rifle as there were little to no deer in the east just after the turn of the century. The .30-06 was not "The" deer rifle yet and and game rifles were still fairly large caliber.

260 is right about the Roberts.. It was first developed for shooting woodchucks..

Guess I am just lucky... haven't experienced a failure with a 243....

glad they are inadequate tho...... just in case I ever get shot by one...

WyoCoyoteHunter,

IF I could find a Model 760 Remington in .257 Roberts, I would own one. = I've looked for over 3 years with NO luck, except a couple of vendors who had them priced at 2-5X their value.
(I don't pay scalper's prices.)

yours, satx

That’s funny.
😃😃

I discovered many years ago that my Remington .243 rifle is ideal for long range shooting pronghorn antelope. Superb accuracy combined with fast expanding bullets make for an unbeatable combination for shots of 300 yards and beyond. I'm certain that 6.5 Creedmore rifles are equally well suited to hunting antelope but I'm not trading.

Sherwood

Sherwood,

UNDERSTOOD. = I feel the same about my "obsolete" circa 1954 Remington Model 760 in .244 REM, that I found in an AR pawn shop in 1966. ====> BEST 60 bucks that I've ever spent.
(An 87 grain JHP at 3500FPS works FINE on "deer sized game" out to beyond 300M.)

yours, tex

An article in the new Hodgdon Annual makes a good point about the advantage the .243 has over the 6CM as a dual-purpose round, based on the usual throating of .243s. The test results bore that notion out, with only one "varmint" load for the CM doing really well.

My .243 is an oddball, with a 7.7" twist and a long throat, which has varmint-weight bullets hanging onto the case neck with their toenails.