furthest shot on big game with your 243.

250yds or so, 5 shots five sheep all running.

95 gr nbtip,, xtrii, 500 yds double lung antelope, knocked over, kicked a bit (too short of a time to count) and that was it. I don't feel the need to stretch it farther, but with appropriate ammo, it's far underrated.

About 450yards big body 7 point, about 215lb dressed. 85gr hornady interbond out of a FN commercial mauser, 4x weaver high shoulder, dropped died.

My favorite varmint rifle is an old Ruger Model 77 MKII Target chambered in 243 purchased from Jensens Sporting Goods in Tucson back in 1996 for the princely sum of $379.00.

I have used this rifle extensively for varmints and I couldn’t begin to tell anyone how many coyotes and bobcat I’ve killed with it.



I did use it on a Couse deer hunt one year and I made the farthest shot I’ve ever taken on a game animal with that rifle at a little over 500 yards (sadly,no pics of that hunt).

Many Coyote 200-300 range with Ruger RPR with Hornady 103 gr ELD-X, Leupold 8.5-25 LRP FFP.

I don't normally hunt deer with my .243 Win and have only shot one deer with my Tikka .243 Win and that was a fluke, since I had climbed a large hill to install a pop-up tent over a permanent blind, because my grandson and his father were coming from another state to hunt and the weather was going to be wet that weekend. The tent blind gets heavy when climbing that long hill, so chose the very light .243 for the trek because it was quite a bit lighter/handier than my .270 Win Rem 700 BDL.

As I had my rifle leaned against a tree and had the pop-up over the blind, and was tying it off, I looked down the old woods road and a buck was standing broadside in the road. I ducked behind the tent blind and got my rifle, then slowly rose up behind the blind, placed the tip of my left little finger on the spar of the blind to steady the shot, and placed the bullet in the kill zone on the buck that was about 200 yards away. He dropped at the hit and was dead quickly after hitting the ground.

The largest other critters were Eastern Coyotes and the .243 Win has plenty of power for those animals. I don't normally call them in, but take them as "targets of opportunity" as they like to eat blueberries in my son's commercial fields. They don't seem to eat as many blueberries as deer and turkeys, due to numbers of critters, but one day, I shot three young, "stupid" ones.

Like most hunters, the majority of deer I have shot have been at 100 yards or less. The furthest I have shot with my 243 was just short of 200. I wouldn't be afraid to push it to 300.

A "modified" .243 (6mm SLR, re-barreled .243 Ruger RPR, 1:7.5 Bartlein), with Berger 105 hybrids, MV 3160 FPS; coyote at 547yds, that believe it of not decided to sit on my tgt berm and sun himself about 3' from my swinger.

In a twisted way I'm sorry I eliminated him from the gene pool.

Last fall took the antelope shown in my avatar at 318 yards. Rifle is an old Savage Stevens 200 In .243 Win., with a Hogue recoil pad, a Rifle Basics trigger, and a handload consisting of a 90 grain Speer Deep Curl bullet, 41.0 gr of Reloder 17, Federal 210 primer in a Federal case.

One yard beyond my buddy's 6mm Creedmoor. Lol

PapaG said:

One yard beyond my buddy's 6mm Creedmoor. Lol

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Nuh-uh!!!

2ndtimer said:

Last fall took the antelope shown in my avatar at 318 yards. Rifle is an old Savage Stevens 200 In .243 Win., with a Hogue recoil pad, a Rifle Basics trigger, and a handload consisting of a 90 grain Speer Deep Curl bullet, 41.0 gr of Reloder 17, Federal 210 primer in a Federal case.

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Those Speer deep curl bullets have been discontinued for 4 years.

“Those Speer deep curl bullets have been discontinued for 4 years.“

Yep, and I only have about 50 left, loaded up. Fortunately for me, I also have 100 of the also discontinued Speer 90 gr Deep Shock bullets loaded up with the same load, if I run out of the Deep Curls. Wish they hadn’t been discontinued, my rifle loves them. From what I have heard, the Deep Shocks perform very similar to the Deep Curls, even though they aren’t bonded like the Deep Curls. I wish I knew why Speer introduces innovative effective bullets, only to quickly remove them from the market.

I only shot one deer with a .243, a Kimber with beautiful wood but with metal machine work that made a Mosin look like a Holland and Holland.

I paced it out, ~17 yards. DRT... but not great penetration, more like a piece of deer the size of a large grapefruit missing.

I've shot 2 mule deer at 200-300 yards with a 243. Both were across open ground and I didn't have a rangefinder, so I'm not going to claim any exact numbers, but it was somewhere in that ballpark. Savage 10 shooting 100gr Core-Lokts.

I have taken probably a dozen deer with my 243. Doubt if the longest shot was much over 60 yards. Armadillos and coyotes, however, have been popped at over 250.

Shot a big running pronghorn at 285 yards after chasing him for 6 hours. He was running broadside and I lead him with the crosshairs high and 3 feet out in front of his nose. 100gr bullet hit him in his ear hole and ruined any chance of a trophy mount.
Effective though.

Whitetail buck in South Dakota at 285 yards with a Remington 90 grain ballistic tip.

Been a 243 fan since I was 11 and saw the introductory ad by Winchester. 500 ft lb left at 500 yards. Back then, wow!

PapaG said:

Been a 243 fan since I was 11 and saw the introductory ad by Winchester. 500 ft lb left at 500 yards. Back then, wow!

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Look at the progress since then!!!! (Mind you that's not too shabby!) We're pushing that 500 ftlb out past 900 now, wished my grandpa coulda seen where we are now, he'd get a kick outta it lol, started me down the long range game with a .22 wmr

mshootnit said:

https://www.sierrabullets.com/product/6mm-243-caliber-100-gr-spt/

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Don’t need those. Have a decent supply of Nosler Partitions in 85, 95 and 100 gr weights, along with some 95 gr Ballistic Tips. Probably more than a lifetime supply for an old guy.

Newcastle, WY, range finder read 387 yards, one shot using tripod with 6mm Remington (.243 diameter) 85 grain bullet:

About 130 yards with my 243. But about 40 years ago, I took a cull whitetail spike at 325 yards with my 6 mm Remington...Now I restrict my shooting at whitetails to about 200 yards or less.