Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting 243 Bullet Suggestion

95 gr. Ballistic Tip.Probably my all time favorite .243 deer bullet.

How does this bullet perform, if deer is hit in the front shoulder?
I know there great for boiler room shots. I only ask, because I have no experience with BT's on larger game. Thanks

The second picture of my wife, that Mule deer was hit in the shoulder at 200 yds. with a 90 grn. BT

At 200 yds, just about any bullet will hold together when hitting a shoulder. The true test is what happens at 50 yds when it is going 3000fps. I would be very leary of a BT holding together at close range when hitting big bones.

I use the 95 grain Partition to hunt with and the 95 grain BT to practice with. Both shoot to the same approximate POA in the 15 or so 243 and 6mm rifles that I've used them in.

I used to use the 85 grain Sierra BTHP in .243" and the 90 grain Sierra BTHP in .257", but after 4 failures, 2 from each bullet weight/diameter, I won't hunt deer or antelope with them anymore. I have come to the conclusion that, for me, I want a bullet that is sure to penetrate in the sub-.284" bore hunting cartridges, so in the .224", .243", .257", and .264" that means Barnes, Hornady, Nosler, and Speer. No Sierra, for anything put paper and varmints.

As with many things in life, YMMV.

Jeff

Jeff: What about the 270? Would you be comfortable with Sierra's in it for deer? also, have you tried the Sierra's 257 120gr HPBT? thanks

IME,it performs well.you'll have quite a bit of blood shot meat on the shoulder,but you'll get plenty of penetration if thats your concern.I shot a doe with the 95 gr BT a few years back at 23 paces, quartered hard away.Hit her in the short ribs, recovered the bullet under the hide at the front of her neck.The only place she went was down.

85 grain Nosler Part.

I don't shoot 120 grain .277" bullets and I don't, usually, shoot bullets weighing over 115 grain in my .257" bore rifles. I shoot 140 grain Partitions in my 270 WSM and I shoot most anything/everything in the 75 grain to 115 grain range in my .257" bore rifles.

Jeff

Have had real good luck with the Barnes 85 gr. TSX. You can use the Hornady 87 gr. VMax for practice and varmints, and the Barnes for bigger stuff.

If you get the urge for a factory load the 95 gr XP3 worked awesome, through the chest at I believe 80 yds.

I shot a buck with a Nosler BT (with a .280) in the shoulder up close once and it didn't go down. We tracked after it and saw a glimpse of it hauling ass again, with blood on the entry side shoulder, but it got away.

I have a Rem 600 in 6mm with an 18.5" barrel. Haven't used this to hunt deer but have taken many caribou. It is my wife's main gun. I have used it enough to form some serious biases.

Folks seem to like the TSX's and they do penetrate better than anything else but in my experience they don't leave the width of bullet channel of the Partition. At close range and high velocity the petals can blow off leaving a very small wound channel in the second, third and fourth quarters of penetration after a great big channel in the front 1/4. This isn't good on a quartering shot.

At long range the explosive expansion is lacking. In a small .243 you need all the help you can get. I can't get exited about the TSX.

Cup and Core bullets with a mechanical lock like the Rem CL or Horn Interlock work well except at close range were a core separation is possible. This limits penetration though usually not critically. The Ballistic Tip has nothing to lock the core in and can lose the core limiting penetration. I don't use it. Sometimes it works well. Sometimes it doesn't. The new Accubond might be better. Except bonded bullets often overexpand.

Bonded bullets will often over-expand at close range. This creates a very wide wound channel that on quartering shots might not penetrate well enough. The Accubond seems to have more limited expansion than most. It might be good but I don't have experience with it yet.

The Nosler Partition is wonderfully balanced. It offers some of the explosive expansion of a cup and core (front half) with some of the penetration prowess of the X bullet (back half). To me it's better than both. I have used the 85, 95 and 100 grain. The 85 has worked well but is out penetrated by the heavier bullets. There is little to choose between 95 and 100.

We have some 115 Barnes Original RN that also work well but even here the 100 Nosler Partitions work a bit better. You could through out every other bullet for the 6 in my opinion and never feel lacking.

As mentioned earlier, the Speer 105gr round nose works great. It ain't real sexy looking, but it really penetrates. Crazy accurate in my .243's.

My son lost a deer this year to a very well placed shot at 40 yards using Hornady 100gr SST. The deer turned sharply after being hit and trotted off without leaving a blood trail. The SST bullets shot great at 100 yards but I will no longer use them for hunting. We will switch to a 100gr Partition for 2010.

This begs the question: How do you know?

Another begged question: Hornady does not list a 100gr 6MM SST on its website.

95 grain Nosler BT out of my .243 has worked well for me.

You can't go wrong with the 100 gr. Partition. I've seen them kill lots of stuff, even stuff much bigger and tougher than deer.
I'd say that if you need to have more confidence in your .243 load, then the 100 gr. Partition is the way to go.
All of that said, any of the 100 gr. cup and core stuff will work fine. All of them were designed for that round as well as the 6mm Remington for use on deer class stuff. The only problems I've ever seen from the .243 were from bad shooting or using varmit bullets on big game. E

I have killed a box car full of critters with a 95g partition loaded with 43g of IMR 4350 with a Win primer. Some very large deer were killed at ranges of 350 yards, all one shot kills with only one traveling 25 yards(he was a monster Nebraska buck).

Later on, I discovered the 100g Hornady BTSP loaded with 42.3g of IMR 4350 with a Win primer...this bullet is really hard to believe how great it really is. We killed some large hogs in Texas with it shot straight through the shoulders and at quartering angles. The 100g Hornady BTSP is really a very accurate bullet.

I have a friend that moved to New Zealand, he has kept in touch at how effective the 95g SST is on the large deer they have down there...this is a guy in which you can trust his judgement.

I have a little nephew that is only 13, and I worked up a load for his 243 model 7 with a muzzle break with the 85g Tripple shocks. I was amazed at how accurate this bullet is. With a single box of 50, I worked up a load with IMR 4064 that was super accurate from 39.2-40.5g of IMR 4064 with a Fed 210 and 42g of R#19. I only had one box of bullets(50) and had bullets left over. The 4064 load was the most accurate, but the R#19 was faster by 150 fps.

I was pleasantly surprised at how little the 85g Barnes tripple shock bullets copper foul a barrel.

I have a box of 85g Hornady Interbonds that I am going to try in my own rifle...just for grins and giggles.

There are lot of really great bullets for the 243, no doubt. Shot placement may be more important than the bullet selection, so much so that bullet selection may be a moot point.

One thing that I noticed about youngsters is how unwieldy rifles are for them to balance and point. My little nephew was started off with a Thompson Contender with a Carbine barrel in 7/30 Waters which he could handle very well. We put a 2-8 Leupold on it so he could have a wide field of view. He has killed 12 deer along with a few coyotes, bobcats, and deer running dogs with the 7/30 Waters. The 243 Model 7 has been sitting in the safe waiting for him to grow so he could handle it.

Hope this helps

I am a Nosler Partition fan, my favorite bullet in 30 caliber and above, but not in calibers below 270..The Nosler partitions simply have too small of a frontal diameter when fully expanded in both the 22 and 6mm calibers, even the 25s are a bit small IMO...I have gotten by with them well in the more open country where I could watch the run and get a direction or see them fall, but they sure can make a lot of tracks on ocassion.

I much prefer a Remington Corelokt, Nosler Accubond, Hornady Interlock, even the 100 gr. Sierra, or some other cup and core, or bonded core bullet that reacts a bit more violently and leaves a better blood trail.

My all time favorite 6mm in the larger 6mms is the 100 gr. Remington Corelokt. I saw one of these shoot through an Eland lengthwise, and thats pretty amazing IMO...