Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters What cartridges don't kill as well as the book would suggest?

Pretty sure it was Jim Carmichael in Outdoor Life in the past year

...............I`ve never heard of or have seen this book. Is there one?

As to what cartridges don`t kill as well as a book would suggest, and as someone else has stated, this is more of a bullet or bullet type issue than a caliber diameter issue.

Sorry I stole your confidence in the .30-30 all those years back. Is a feeble cartridge of course and I've had to shoot everything I've killed with one at least once as I recall. Not like the .270 at all...

I have probably had the most diffculty killing big game with the .308 Winchester than anything else. This was because I got an aluminum-buttplated Savage 99EG in .308 when I was 13 and weighed 112 pounds, and it HURT. The trigger wasn't so hot either.

Eventually I cured the flinch with a Remingtion 700 in .243 Winchester, which had a pretty good trigger, but I avoided the .308 for years until I started shooting the round again a few years ago. Somehow it kills darn well now!

This is just speculation on my part, but I think the 243 gets a bum rap.

It's very easy to get an 80 grain or smaller cup and core bullet going too fast to hang together on impact in a 243. I suspect that this accounts for a lot of the wounded and lost animals.

I think that if you load the 243 with 100 grain or 95 grain Partitions (or some such) it's probably as reliable a deer-downer as any, even for jumbo mule deer.

I was raised on a far West Texas ranch on the Mexican Border in the Big Bend Country and the 30-30 was king of the Mule Deer rifles back then, the 300 Savage was a magnum and people envied the 250-3000 user. The 25-35 was every ranch kids first rifel.

My brother and I were sitting on a rock and we could see a deer at about maybe 800 yards, who knows?..I told him I could probably kill it, he said BS and we bet a dollar (lot of money then) I took a rest and took the complete barrel in the rear sight and hit that deer between the eyes and won the bet! I had put the front bead over his shoulder btw...Oh well!

I shot another deer with the 25-35 running at over 300 yds. My dad said it zigged when it should have zagged..Nothing worse than a 15 year old cowboy with a rifle, trust me!! they should be tied to a tree during hunting season..

I had a job one summer shooting deer for meat to feed a fencing crew on a ranch in the Sierra Del Carmens of Mexico where my dad and uncles had a ranch leased for a few years..It was crawling with the so called Del Carmen Whitetail and Mule deer..I rode around horse back and shot deer with my Win. M-63 and 22 L.R. solids or HPs, couldn't tell much difference..two quick shots behind the shoulder and keep riding until I had shot about 10 then made a big circle and came back and gutted them..I learned this from an old Mexican cowboy that worked for us..If you pushed them they would run off but if you left and came back they laid down and died right there or close, never lost one. Then went to camp got a crew and some mules and packed them in gave some to the local Forrestals (game wardens, local cops and whatever)and the for the camp was a typical day..The locals sometimes traded us trapped quail and tortillas for deer. The locals had no guns back then.. It was a good time for a 13 or 14 year old kid..

The point is if used properly most any caliber will kill efficiently under certain circumstances...Under controled conditions and at short range the 222 is an excellent deer round, but it can also lead to failure if your careless with placement, same for the 25-35, the shot MUST be in the heart lung as a gut shot is a lost animal, he will go miles.

Alabamaed,
You ruined my day for sure! I have killed many deer and probably 6 or more bull elk with the .250 Sav. using the factory 100 gr. silvertip and the 117 gr. Rem Corelokt RN, in the Savage Mod 99..My dad probably killed 50 or more elk with it..and a truck load of deer..

I still have that rifle and shot a cow elk with it a few years ago, and have shot many deer with it since those early days..I think its one caliber that kills out of porportion to its size, and better IMO than the 243s that I have used...

The only way I know to make it fail is poor shooting or using the wrong bullets..but to each his own and I don't doubt you had some bad experiences with it..thats the way these things work....

Ray-I have shot over a dozen deer with the 250/3000 and have never lost a single one. I have shot them double lung, heart and shoulder. they all have seemed to go a little farther than with other cartridges and took a little longer to die. I have used 87gr, 100 gr and 117gr bullets from Hornady, nosler and speer. I have found that the 250 savage is about equal to the 243 win. The 250 Savage need a goodly bit more velocity with all bullet weights. There are better cartridges available. When I use a 25 cal it will be my 257 Roy. I am not slamming the 250 Savage, I just think it meets the criteria for the thread subject.

Thanks, JB. I'm delighted to hear the 458 isn't such a wussy. It makes the story better when I tell people I've fired a .585 Nyati that's twice as powerful as a 458!

I have, and it is.

Denton,

I have some experience with the .243 and believe you are absolutely right. I killed a number of deer and pronghorn with that .243 and never had a problem if I put the bullet in the right place. I used several different bullets in the 100-grain range, and all penetrated plenty.

In fact I have said more than once that they only people who have trouble killing deer with a .243 are some gun writers.

My all time favorite comment that I've heard more than once regarding the 243 on deer is; "yeah it'll work but you really need to hit 'em right". Fortunately the several deer that I've killed with a 243 (and one with a 6mm Rem) were not hit wrong (grin).

I agree on both points- especially the gunwriter part(present company excepted) ..I have always agreed with Jim Carmichael's take on the round that it is so accurate and easy to shoot well for most folks that they actually get MORE from it than many larger rounds, simply due to bullet placement.


I have always liked the .243.. And felt it was always a victim of it's own popularity over the last 50 years..

A lot of newbies get the gun and expect too much from the round. A lot of big bore freaks expect too little from it.

And a lot of .250-2000 and .257 Roberts lovers resent the little round because it larely suplanted those older rounds as a short action small caliber deer round in most models of factory rifles since the 1950s.

As to bullets..

In 1984 I saw a 100g Federal soft point bullet from at .243 shoot through TWO yearling antelope bucks standing side by side hit though the lungs broaside at 350 yards.

Those both dropped right where they stood. Of course, the second buck was actually hit by about a .35 cal slug by the time the 100 grainer had passed though the first one.

I would bet that such a bullet would most likely rake through any chest cavity on a single deer with the same result at that distance.

Whew!! For a while I was worried that my 243 was cursed.



I think the key is the 100 grain part. That gets the MV down to where a standard bullet is going to perform well. JB has been saying 2700 FPS for a long time, and that has always seemed right to me. I tend to gravitate toward heavy for caliber bullets.

Denton,

When I was hunting with the .243 a lot, I took at least half my animals with the 105 Speer Hot-Core. That was so long ago I didn't own a chronograph and I assumed the muzzle velocity of the load was about what the Speer manual suggested, right around 3000 fps. This was because I used the same bullet, powder charge, brass, primer and even the same model of rifle.

When I finally bought a chronograph a few years later (1979) I found my handloads, in my rifle, got around 2750-2775 fps. Which is probably why it worked so well! (Aside from me not flinching, of course.)

there is a fellow I spoke to at Kimber last year who says he has hunted mule deer all his life with the speer 105 hotcore from the .243.

High Brass,

I keep hearing the same comment about a bunch of rounds, including the .270 on elk, the .30-06 on African plains game, etc. etc. As if more powerful rounds will make up for bad bullet placement.

I have a little experience with bad bullet placement, just like anybody who has hunted more than somewhat, and have found that a "premium" .338 Winchester or .375 H&H bullet has relatively little effect when put in a leg or behind the rib cage, even on deer. Amazing, isn't it?

No substitute for a well placed shot is there?

I had a brief affair with the .300 Ultra Mag and wasn't impressed much. I used it for a little bit while culling Texas whitetails for research while in grad school. Only two times did I remember kills with it being something out of the ordinary for my .280. I also remember several well hit deer that went a heck of a lot further and with much less of a blood trail than I would have like. Mostly shooting 150 Sciroccos, but also some 165 Nosler Solid Base.

In all seriousness, relative to the reputation it has here on the Fire as a Hammer of Thor, the cartridge I've been a little underwhelmed with on deer, having kilt 7-8 of em with it... talkn' relative to what folks say, remember... dare I say this... uhm...

Never mind.

Exactly.......

A couple decades ago if somebody told me a guy could handily kill elk with 243, I would be skeptical............


Casey