Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting 243 Win bullet suggestions

That would be my first suggestion too--if you can get them to shoot accurate.

Is Federal offering the 95gr NBT?


Casey

We have killed a ton of deer with 95 grain Ballistic Tips. If you don't hand load Winchester loads them in their Supreme loads.

Hornady 100g Interlock BTSP

Plain old Hornady Interlock 100 grainer. Superb bullet.( sorry but my rifle didnt like the boat tail...oh well...it happens)

If you don't like tracking deer and ya get an exit assuming you don't shoot em up the dark star then the 95NBT is it.

From what I have read the .243 BT is built a bit like an accubond as far as tje jacket goes. Same forum also has cut aways of the 120 bt vs 140 bt in 7mm and you could see a difference in jacket. Maybe less prone to blowing up? Here is the link as I do not want to steal their pics

http://forum.gon.com/showthread.php?t=583530&page=2

Another good factory offering is the 95gr fusion. It's been accurate in several 243's and performs well. Federal is now coating the .243 fusion bullet with Boron Nitride instead of molly. I didn't know much about Boron but learned something from D Tubbs site. http://www.davidtubb.com/boron-nitride-coating-bullets

85 Barnes hands down does anything ever needed.

Before that I always ran the 105 speer after loosing too many cores to the 100 nos solid base bullets.

Never a real fan of BT bullets though they have come a long ways since the exploding ones.

Never had a failure with Nosler Partitions, always recovered the deer and never recovered a bullet. Used the 95gr Partitions since the 100gr often sold out and the shelf would be empty - but the 95gr would be full.

I like the Partitions.. may not drop the deer as fast as something like a BT, but gives more leeway for a bad angle or bad shot getting the bullet to where it needs to go.

Interestingly Boron does have some advantages over moly, but my wife and I have shot well over 200,000 rounds of moly coated bullets. What we have found, no moisture issues( we live in a humid area to start with). And we dont' have a zero chasing issue either, BUT you do have to learn how to clean the gun and it ends up never being TOTALLY clean but works just fine for what we shot which was same game David does.

Eventually I'll swap all over to the boron for sure. In the meantime there have never been many issues with moly for us.

Sorry, a bit OT there.

I've shot a truck load of deer & feral hogs with my first real deer rifle, which is an old Remington 700 Classic in .243
Always used Remington Corelock 100 grain Factory Ammo before I started re-loading years ago.
Now all my nieces & nephews argue over who gets to use that rifle when they come home to the ranch during deer season. I still keep a box of 100gr Corelocks around for them to use. Never lost a deer with it, & never had to trail one more than 30 yards, either.
When I handload for that rifle, I use 85gr Sierra Softpoints, or 85gr Barnes Triple Shocks. It's still a very accurate rifle after over 30 years of hunting with it.

That's pretty much my experience with on game performance. The 7mm 140 BT seams to expand better than the 120 BT which has the thicker jacket.
The .243 95 grain BT was designed for whitetail deer.

In factory ammo, I'd run the 95 Fusions first. I can't see why you'd need anything else.

My antelope bullet/loads are Barnes 80g ttsx, 85g sgkhp, 95g NHBT.
All run under 1" @ 100yds and moa or a bit under to 400yds.

My 700 BDL will shoot both fine the SP and the BTSP, but the SP holds together and just about allways leaves an exit hole. Plain old RP 100 gr Corelokts are good also in factory ammo. Magnum Man

85 TSX with RL19 or RS Hunter. I plan to switch to Hunter when the RL19 I have is gone. I'm sure that for Deer and lopes any of the other bullets mentioned will work, but I have had outstanding results loading the 85 TSX for my brother.

My .243 loves this bullet and H4350.

I think I will start with the old partition and fusion and see what shoots better. Don't think I can go wrong as long as it's accurate.
Thanks

I shoot the factory loaded Barnes 80gr ttsx out of my x-bolt 243. The last buck I shot with the gun/bullet did a flip over backwards and drt.

An acrobatic deer? Sounds like ttsx might be worth a try too