Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Mule deers thought s on a .243

JB I have read many many of your articles in magazines, forums and the like. But I have never came across anything you have written about the .243 win. Whats your opinion and experiences with it. We have chatted on some forums about 7x57s(something I would like to one day pick your brain about futher) But for the life of me can not seem to find anything about a .243????

Oh, I've written about the .243 Winchester here and there. I have a great fondness for it, because I developed a bad flinch in my teens due to shooting a Savage 99 .308 with an aluminum buttplate--which also had a comb too low for a scope. I never really got over the flinch until buying a lightly used Remington 700 BDL .243 at age 20 from one of my co-workers, a woman whose former boyfriend had given her the rifle as a present. The price was $80, for the rifle in its factory box and a box of factory ammo, most of which hadn't been fired. That's ALL the rifle had been shot, and back in those days Remington also included a nice leather sling with BDL's. (Of course, back in those days, $80 was almost a week's take-home pay from my job.)

Anyway, the flinch went away and I killed 17 whitetails, mule deer and pronghorn over the next few years with the rifle. Mostly used the 105 Speer Hot-Cor, but used some other bullets as well, none of them premiums, and never had a problem except when I screwed up.

After the flinch went away, I of course sold the .243 to buy more manly rifles. But eventually I started shooting a .257 Roberts for deer and pronghorn, and never had a problem. At the time I convinced myself the .257 was superior to the .243, but after a decade or two realized that was BS.

A few years ago my wife Eileen started getting recoil headaches from her NULA .270, so sold it and ordered one in .257 Roberts. It worked fine but the stock doesn't fit her very well. Three years ago I bought a used Husqvarna .243 from the Campfire Classifieds, with a moderate Monte Carlo stock. Eileen picked it up one day and said it fit her perfectly.

She'd used a light little Heym .243 a couple years earlier on a cull hunt for fallow deer in Ireland, loaned to her for the hunt. She killed several deer easily with the 100-grain Remington Core-Lokt ammo provided, and liked the way the little rifle didn't kick.

The Husqvarna was also nice and light, almost as light as her .257 NULA, so she started hunting with it, using a handload with 100-grain Partitions at 2900 fps. She's now taken several deer and pronghorn with it, no problems, including the biggest bodied whitetail buck she's ever taken, a 4x4 with very heavy antlers, and it's become her favorite rifle.

She doesn't hunt elk as much as she used to, but asked me one day if the .243 was too small. She only hunts meat elk, and I said it would work fine, as long as she put the bullet in the right place. She said, "But what about a bad shot?" I said, "When have you ever made a bad shot on elk?"

I do have another .243, a custom heavy-barrel varmint rifle built on a Mexican Mauser action, and it works fine for both varmints and shooting deer out of hayfields. But if I want a light .243 (and I'm starting to get that restless loony yearning) I'll have to find another one, because the Husky is hers.

I thank you for your thoughts. I have a 700 parts gun slapped together under the premise of an antelope rifle for my wife. She can shoot it comfortably and its quite accurate with a 95 vld at 3150 and a 55 gr nosler at 3900, so it is my coyote rifle as well. Funny thing is its nice and light. With a bipod and 6x weaver it weighs about 8lbs. so it has joined me on way more stalks this last two years then most MANLY man would confess to.....

P.S. You are the first gun writer, I think to ever confess to developing a flinch. MEN do not develope flinches they just have a bad shot once in awhile ..................

Yeah, real men don't flinch, especially gun writers!

I even developed a temporary flinch once maybe 10 years ago. Was invited on a prairie dog shoot by a well-known firearms manufacturer, along with a number of other writers. We were mostly shooting a new .22-250 intended for coyote hunting, and the rifles were pretty light. I found out my personal tolerance for a light .22-250 is around 600 rounds, because that's how many pieces of empty brass I'd collected while shooting all one day and into the morning of the next. Suddenly the .22-250 started feeling more like a .375 H&H every time it went off, and I started missing more than usual! However, on that day I switched to a .22 rimfire and the flinch immediately went away.

Flinch is a curious thing. I developed a handgun flinch almost 20 years ago and I still fight it to this day. Rifles generally don't give me trouble but there are times when I find a 10/22 makes me flinch because I find the bolt slamming back very un-nerving at times.

Starting out I just had to learn what I can handle in terms of recoil which is how I ended up with my handle. I've also come to the conclusion that a day at the range I really enjoy a heavy barrel .223.

One thing to consider with the .243 is with say and X bullet that retains 100% of it's weight, a 85 gr gr X is going to give similar performance to a 170 gr cup/core bullet. Which put's it in solid standing as a big game round.

I can get flinchy with a handgun too.

Most often, I use a .22 LR in between groups with any center-fire to keep flinch at bay. I just concentrate on fundamentals and consider it akin to a major league ball player shagging fly-balls to develop muscle memory etc.

here, just wanted to go ahead and get this picture outta the way:

When our dad was teaching us to shoot the centerfire rifles he would regularly mix-up who got to load the rifle. When he loaded it, he would hide the chamber with his hand and every once in a while slip in a fired case to check us for flinch. If we showed, the center-fire was done for the day (.243 M788, incidentally) and we didn't get to shoot it for at least a week, but the .22 LR was fair game. Effectively taught us how to be self-aware of flinching and taught us that flinching happens, no matter how manly we are. I do the same with my girls with the .243. I admitted years ago that I hate recoil. I can tolerate it, but I hate it. Hence, the .243 Win and .260 Rem are my favorite centerfire rounds that I currently own, but I really want a .204 Ruger or .223 Rem in a carbine for my Encore, just for fun.

Why did speer quit making the 105 hot core? Not that I mind, I use mostly 115s, but I have to listen to my neighbor who helps me build guns at times lament the demise of the speer 105 hot core. He cannot make anything else shoot in his 788 except 80gr bergers and whines about it everytime he gets a drink or two in him. I have thought about trying to find him some NOS speer 105s but am kinda immune to the crying by now.

i can sit at the bench and absorb recoil just fine. i can deal with the pain but the shock wave or jarring or whatever, is what gets me. gives me a nasty headache like someone's been smacking the back of my head.

so i tend to stick with .243 and .257 roberts as well. just not worth dealing with the unpleasant recoil when those can do whatever i need to do.

When Speer introduced the DeepCurl bonded bullet a few years ago, they intended to replace all the Hot-Cors with DeepCurls. Apparently they found that impossible to do, whether because of plant limitations or customer demand, or both. But one of the Hot-Cors they did drop was the 105 6mm.

I'm kind of torn on the 243. I was a 25-06 slut and tended to look down at the 243 (you know a 243 is a 13 year old boy and the 25-06 is a 25 year old man power wise IMO).

When my girls expressed an interest in hunting, I looked for affordable "youth" rifles. I thought that a 260 could be a good dual purpose rifle for coyotes and deer/antelope (errorring on the deer side). All I could find locally was a couple of Savage model 11s in 243 which in my opinion is a better coyote rifle than deer rifle.

In the last 5 years they have shot 9 Alberta deer (both WT & MD) using Federal Premium 85gr Barnes TSX. While most have died with one shot, several have gone for death runs, some fairly long and unfortunately deeper into the very steep badlands draws. As I am somewhat handicapped due to a back injury that affects my left leg strength, that sucks.

Now I realize that a deer can be shot in the lungs with a 300 mag and it still runs off before dying, I wonder if a larger caliber might not be better. Still thinking 260/7-08/308. I do have a couple of 25-06 laying around.

Thoughts?

Thanks, I will pass that explanation on to my buddy sometime this week. I am sure since we are going hunting in NM next week that he will get in his bourbon and that I will hear the whine again. I doubt it will quit his whining about it but o'well

Not JB, obviously.

There have been studies showing that chest shot WT's react to the type bullet as much as, or more than the caliber. Generally, chest shot deer were observed to run about twice as far when shot with "hard" bullets vs. "soft" C&C bullets. That principle seemed consistent through a range of calibers from the .24's thru the .30's.

It appears that chest destruction is more of an indicator of DRT's and short runs, than thru and thru penetration.

Of course shoulder and CNS shots produce different reactions than chest shots, usually with greater meat loss, head shots excluded. I don't like head shooting does. If one doesn't get a solid hit or the deer moves at the instant the trigger is pulled, a terrible wound can result. A jaw shot off is a terrible, slow way for a deer to die. Unless they're very close, I don't go for the head.

DF

My second 6 mm Remington shot 105 Hot Cores into the low 2's. Those bullets were about the best bullets for accuracy in that rifle. I took the rifle and 105 Hot Cores on an antelope hunt. I hit a buck antelope in the lungs 6 times before it dropped. The holes were the same size going in and going out. The buck wasn't excited before the shooting started and he didn't see me. He walked, ran, walked around me. Maybe I should have been aiming for the shoulders, I don't know. I never loaded those bullets for game again. But they sure shot accurately.

I used to look down on the 243, and as a result I passed on a Browning Low Wall, NIB at a good price. What a dumbass I was!

I had a Browning Low Wall for a while, one of the most accurate .243's I've ever seen. Spectacular wood, too. I was an even bigger dumbass and sold it!

I passed on a nice MS .243 that was very reasonably priced years back when I was in my big is good, bigger is better mindset.

Not J.B. either but I confess that I am not very fond of the .243. I also confess that I most likely haven't given the cartridge a fair shake. As I now recall, I've owned three rifles so chambered, and still have one of them. I had a lovely Ruger Nr. 1 that was custom stocked and beautifully engraved and gold inlaid. I think I shot two roe deer with it. I don't remember the ammo I used but it was most likely Norma factory. I picked up a beautiful Browning factory rifle in the early 70s sometime, and I shot but a single animal with it, an alpine chamois. The one I have now is a custom stocked Heym SR-20 that is my wife's rifle. I don't remember either of us shooting anything with it other than paper.

The experience of but three small animals using the cartridge is probably worse than none at all statistically, but in those three cases the results were less than spectacular. It killed all three animals dead enough, but they all went further than I thought they should, and took longer to expire that I expected.

I've not used it on an animal since. I won't say that I wouldn't try it again on something, but so far, I haven't had either the need or desire to do so. I'm content with that.

TT