I've always been a fan of every aspect of .243 Winchester except its barrel life. So, glancing at the recipes in Hornady's reloading manual, they give a minimum charge taking the 80 grain GMX all the way down to 2800 FPS- well below territory of what I'd consider a "barrel burner." Anyone got experience with less-than-screaming .243 loads in terms of accuracy? Any pet recipes or other reloading tips in this regard anyone would like to share? Would probably be shooting 80 grain Barnes TTSXs. Thanks in advance for any input.

How many 243 rounds you shoot a year to make you worry about barrel life?

I had worked up a Trailboss load with some 70 gr Hornady's for my daughters when they were young.

It turned into a fun little plinker for them although the 88 mags are a bit clunky.

Wanna say 1,800 fps ish?

Sub 2" at 100 with irons.

Not PRS volumes, but you don't lose much ballistically by taking a .243 down to ~2900 FPS muzzle velocity, and do extend the rifle's service life significantly.

I'm not into yanking spark plugs in general and specifically with monos. I want monos to be going like lightning. I'd use something other than monos if I wanted to run stuff slower. The 100 grain interlocks or a 95 ballistic tips come to mind.

FYI, Hornady Whitetail ammo is runs just over 2850ish and has the 100 grain interlock in it. I've killed several whitetail, hogs and pronghorn with it when I didn't have time to reload and always had a quarter-sized exit.

Hear ya, but I don't shoot lead at stuff I'm feeding my family. Assuming a MV of around 2900-3000, that projectile would still be doing 2400 or better at realistic hunting ranges, which offers plenty of expansion with TTSXs. In the interest of science, I may actually do a water jug test on that to get a real world data point.

Useful barrel life for a 243 as a Hunting Rifle might be what...2500-3000 rounds...?

That's a lot of time in the field even allowing for load development.

If you manage to burn out a tube you got your money's worth. If you burned one out with Barnes Bullets you earned it!

A lot of guys see a loss of accuracy between half and a third that round count.

Well I'm wondering how many rounds it take's to burn out a 243 barrel? And what constitutes a burned out barrel?

Criteria would be a consistent loss of accuracy or increase of the velocity's standard deviation. With hot loads, .243 WIN can do this in half the time of its parent case, the .308 WIN. Varies by the barrel's construction, materials, loads used, of course. A friend of mine started noticing changes to his groups around 1250 rounds. My theory here is that, like many mechanical things, if you back performance off its maximum by 5-10%, you save a much greater percentage of service life and still have more than adequate external and terminal ballistics.