Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Why did the .243 outsell and eventually almost obsolete the 257 Roberts?

the .243 and the 85 SGK over a max load of IMR4895 is my all time favorite all around hunting load.... i've told it too many times what all i've used it on successfully... i'd start to feel like some old guy if i repeated it anymore...

i discovered over 30 years ago that the 85 SGK shot well in every rifle that i tried it in... and that was quite a few... and without going through "the list" i'll say that i've gotten one shot DRT kills on everything from ground squirrels to black bear with that bullet...

my latest, and greatest .243 had one bullet that it shot better... the 70 nosler bt... as the throat has worn, the nosler has lost some of it's luster... the 85 SGK still shoots, though....

I love my .243. It has taken many whitetail and mule deer with one shot and zero losses. This little rifle has been passed to many of my friends and family members with the same results. I used to own several large magnums. Now a days I find my needs covered by the .280 and .243.

I think it all boils down to using a good bullet and placing it properly.

My .243 was a Mossberg. Accurate enough, bad trigger and cheap enough to buy with firewood cutting money. I'm really glad nobody told me about the varmints vs deer loadings because I bought the rifle with 2 boxes of 80 grain PP's. When a bullet goes clear through a deer I ignorantly thought penetration was good enough. It has been a long time since I had a .243 but I got a heck of a deal on one recently and am having fun trying to see how it shoots. Might even take it deer hunting.

I, too, was around for the coming of the .243. And saw it take off like nobody ever expected.
The .257 was saddled with some bad design features from the start. One of it's loads was a 117 gr. round nose bullet designed for the woods hunter. Since the bullet was seated out to 2.80 inches, that meant the throat in the barrel had to be pretty long. When the handoloaders of that day tried handloading for that round with lighter, pointed bullets, they often found that the accuracy of their loads weren't so hot. Remember, this was with 1950's bullets, barrels and bedding.
The sharper handloaders, like Townsend Whelan, would take the magazine spacers out of their M70 Winchesters and use an '06 follower instead. Then they could seat their 100 gr. pointed bullets out just shy of the lands. His Bob had a long history of 1 inch groups for five rds. which was really good back then.
Warren Page did push the 6mm's and got the cartriage companies to adopt them. But his necked down .243, the Page Super Pooper, was a fire formed .308 case with a powder capacity like the 6mm Remington, or even a tad more than that.
Remington saw the 6mm's as a long range varmit round. Their introduction, the .244 Rem, had 12 inch twist barrels and their factory loads used 75 and 90 gr. bullets. It didn't sell well. But Winchester, just using the .308 case necked down to .243, loaded theirs with 80 and 100 gr. bullets. Good bullets at that. As long as the hunter didn't mix up the varmit bullets with the big game bullets, they worked fine.
Alot of the .243's bad rep comes from using the varmit bullets on big game. I can recall an article by one of the gun scribes of the day that even advocated this for open country deer and Pronghorn. Warren Page wrote some stuff about this. Particularly when Nosler started making their Partitions in .243 diameter. They, above all, turn the .243's into real killers.
The .257 Bob had it's share of troubles with bullets too. Jack O'Connor wrote once that he spent a season chasing wounded deer all over northern Mexico due to .257 Bob bullets that wouldn't open well.
The better design features and the better barrels that were made for the .243 made it's rep. When Townsend Whelan did his comparision of the .243 and the .257 Bob, he used his older M70 Bob modified as above. But the .243 he used was a new, stainless steel barreled, heavy varmit model M70. By the time he was done describing all of the sub MOA groups he shot, along with the pictures of his groups, I'll bet ever true rifleman who read the article in the American Rifleman was droolong all over for a .243. He ended the article by say that rifle was "the most consistantly accurate rifle he had ever used." Well, sure it was. A nine pound, 26 inch heavy barreled varmit rifle, made with the latest steels and equipment vs. one that was older and lighter.
And so it went. Today, of course, we have much better bullets and barrels. We know how to make anything shoot quite well. That, I'm sure, is why the Bob as we like to call it, has made a modest comeback. E

Marketing. Pure marketing. The 243 was a Winchester branded product, while the 257 bore the name of Ned Roberts, its creator. Mr Roberts was in the business of shooting guns; Winchester was in the business of selling guns and ammo (at the time they were not separate companies). The 243 had a corporate advocate that the 257 Roberts never had.

CC,
Considering that 90 percent of hunters are non-handloaders, and considering that no factory ammo is offered featuring bullets weighing less than 117 grains, where are you getting the data to back up your assertion that most hunters use a 100-grain bullet in the Roberts? I'm guessing most hunters use 117 and 120 grain loads.

Before 1970+/-, Winchester/Western offered factory loads with 87 grain, 100 grain, and 117 grain bullets. I still have a bunch of 40 year old yellow box Winchester factory loads with 87 grain PSPs, 100 grain STs, and 117 grain PPs. Heck, I might even have some of the newer 1970s/1980s vintage white box Winchester factory loads with the same bullets. I don't think that any company was offering a 120 grain factory load back then and the only load over 100 grain that I recall was the 117 grain PP or RNCL, both round-nose designs. Remington dropped their 87 grain and 100 grain factory loads several years earlier than Winchester did, but I don't remember exactly when they did so.

Jeff

KiloCharlie,
Nosler makes a run of the 100 gr .257 Roberts every once in awhile.

as long as we're guessing, i'd guess that almost zero non-handloaders choose the BOB as a hunting rifle...

the bob is attractive because of it's versatility... most of them, IME, will handle bullet weights from 75 gr. to 120, and shoot them acceptably well...

i'd also guess that 90+% of deer hunters are shooting the 100 gr bullet...

I know one guy with a .257 bob he inherited from his father. He is not an "ardent" hunter and does not reload. I guess he has found a box of bullets here or there. He loves the gun, and kills a deer with it when he sees one on his occasional hunting trips. He is not recoil inclined because his Dad left him a 30-06 as well. Were I too wind up with a Bob and the likelyhood of that is increasing, I am buying a pound of the Hodgdon 100V and shooting the 115NP. The pressures are so low for the factory loads me thinks you could get 3100 with no problem from a 23.5 inch tube

That rings true to me...I started hunting after moving to Montana 7 years ago, with a .243. I have a Tikka with a nice Leupold. It's a beautifully precise gun, and it has such a mild recoil I practice with it enough to feel like I really know how to shoot it. Its taken several whitetail and about 6 mulies from 80-300 yds, and the only one that didn't drop very quickly was my own fault, taking a shot I shouldn't have. I don't have anywhere near the experience of some of you guys, but with the experience I do have I feel confident that if I place a 100 gr corelokt properly the deer is dropping quickly. But I want to hunt elk this year with my father-in-law and just got a .260 Sako grey wolf that I've been looking for a while (I'm spoiled for low recoil guns now). Waiting for rings and scope...and I'm curious about how it'll work. I don't handload, I got some 140gr core-lokts and some 120 gr fed fusions to compare at the range after its set up. Any advice on which would make a better medium/long range hunting round?

They both usually use a 1:10 twist only the 6mm Rem uses a 1:9 twist (the 244 used a 1:12 twist). It seems that the general opinion I have read on this forum on 25 caliber is that the best bullet for it is 100 grains. The 6mm 100 grain has the advantage in sectional density.

It Did'nt, My vote has always been the .257 (Never wanted a .243 for some silly reason & there have been opportunities). There have been some real nice .257's out there, Remington mod 30 (1), Browning BLR (3), Browning micro (1), & Ruger mod 77 (2) have all shot well, deer have died every bit as well as with a 25-06, 30-06 ect... I was hooked when my first Browning BLR - acually all 4 have been shooters - shot a 3 shot group @ 100m with all 3 touching with 120 gr Speer cup & cores @ a wee bit more 4831 (about 2 gr) than I should have loaded (actually loaded them for the Rugers & they worked fine) in a tight chamber. I was pushing 3000fps, & found that it wasn't necessary, the darn thing still put those "old Primitive" 120s & those obsolete 117 nps, in very small clusters @ 2700+ from my speer book. I've been reading up on the new 100v & will be watching JB's results as well as picking up a bucket of it since it is listed under several cals I load for. If I had to make a choice between what is in the safe (.348, .300wsm, .280, 257, 25-35, .308) I'd probably just have to pick the .257 & hide the .280 in the back yard somewhere for my other PBGR. When the .243 came out I was probably out hunting with my old 06 or .218 Bee & wasn't paying much attention to the new wonder caliber or something, because I sure missed the urge. I also have never missed the meat I'd have shot up with anything hotter, faster, bigger, nor would I hesitate to take an elk under proper conditions.
Marty

My first in a procession of 257 Roberts was a pre 64 M70 that I converted to the 3" Roberts,and shot everything from 75HP's to 100 gr Partitions in...I just about wore the thing out on New England woodchucks,crows,and foxes and that rifle taught me how to hit little things at distance.

Wanting something lighter than the heavy standard grade,friends and I built a numebr of 3" Roberts with FW contour,22" barrels,loaded up ammo and went hunting with them.I may have been loading the things on the warm side but nothing came unglued,and when we started messing with chronographs, discovered that 87 gr bullets were doing over 3300 fps,and 100 gr bullets were at 3150-3200 fps.I noticed the Roberts shot as flat as the 270 to 400 yards or so(actually a bit flatter with the 100 gr bullets).

Along the way we also loaded 120 gr bullets to over 2900,and I used these and the 100 gr Partitions on lots of antelope and some mule deer,all of which died very quickly regardless of distance.

Friends had 243's and I had a couple myself but when the 243 ran up against the chronograph they just did not keep up with the Roberts,regardless of which of us was doing the load development.

It was about that time I started to discover that within 400 yards or so,trajectory is determined more by bullet speed than BC (so long as BC was relatively close);and the Roberts generally outran everything but the 25/06,which burned more powder,kicked more,and came in 24" barrels.

I might have not been giving the 243 a fair shake but I figured the Roberts didn't need much improvement,was easily as good as the 243 on varmints and did a swell job on the lighter BG,so just stuck with it rather than make my life complicated.

Today may be a different story as the 6mm/ 6.5mm bores benefit from their target reputations and great bullets but 25 caliber bullets are quite good enough,and I have too much life experience with the Roberts to ever abandon it all together.

I whacked far too may Vermont woodchucks,Wyoming pronghorn,jackrabbits, and coyotes to be convinced I want anything else in that power range.

If you have to be a rifle nut to like the Roberts,count me in.....

Bob,

Count me in the crowd of 257 Roberts lovers.
The FIRST rifle my Step Dad had built after returing from Germany after WW II in 1945 was a 257 Roberts. Others followed, but the 257 Roberts was his first love.

Don: I like it because they named it after me........

Bob; I've got a .257 Roberts...



AND a .243 in the house...




What'll I do...

Ingwe

Let me know how that goes. If it does what it claims, I'll find a donor and rebarrel FORTHWITH.

When the 243 was introduced, I rejected the 257 as a favorite round and latched onto the 243 (more modern and more glamorous). Now I see that I was wrong and have returned to the 257 as a great deer cartridge.

Ingwe: I like the rifle, the buck, the cartridge,and the lady holding the rifle is lovely as well....so my recommendation is simple.......replace the 243 with another Roberts...These problems are easily resolved!