What about the .243 Win?

[SamT1]

I had 4 at one time. It was a sweet pickup caliber. I had a model 70, a Remington semi auto (is that a 7400?), a handi rifle ( shot sub moa somehow), and a 700. It did a lot of daily stuff very well. I got into shooing Pins at longer ranges and ended up switching to 308. The 308 is A lot more forgiving on pigs I shoot a lot of.

 

[Scooter22]

It's a great round that just fell out of style. Its fine for anything up to deer. I wouldn't push for bigger stuff but good hunters have used it. I got mine back in 1975 when I was 14. A Sako L579 in a glass bedded Fagen stock. I didn't know what the rifle was but loved what I read about the .243. A local gunsmith put it together. I knew him and he gave me a great deal. Shoots 80-100grn into nickle size groups at 100yds off the bench on bags. I don't use it much anymore. Mainly used it for long rage woodchuck popping back in the 70s and 80s when you could drive the country roads and shoot from the shoulder. Farmers didn't mind but encroaching suburbanites didn't like the BIG bang of varmint hunters. Chucks would disappear with 80grn HPs

 

[mshootnit]

I'm not looking for a target rifle centerfire and have only been playing with the .243 Win for a few years, but love it's ability to push 80-85 grain bullets with impressive ballistics and critter-slamming terminal performance for coyote and larger-sized animals. It's also quite accurate in hunting-weight rifles, shows less wind deflection than .22-250, 55 grain bullets and hits hard, even on deer (with the right bullets).

With all the hype over new cartridges, the .243 Win may deserve a second look...as a very flexible cartridge for both hunting and general shooting fun.

I reload, so for me it is 6mm Rem over 243 WIN. I have been told by some knowledgeable guys that for big deer 243 is good to about 300 yds. I know one guy that lost a big buck quartering away with a 243 shooting 85 gr. HP. So for that reason I believe it is 100 gr. SP for me and broadside or full front neck-chest shots.
For coyotes, great.

 

[Riomouse911]

I like shooting my M77 RSI...Light recoil and enough oomph for a deer, etc. out to ranges I'm comfortable with.

688 yards on a cow elk? THAT thing went down like the hammer of Thor hit it...I am impressed with her marksmanship and the Berger VLD bullet.

 

[Picher]

I once mounted a scope on a .243 Handi-Rifle for a neighbor and sighted it in with 100 grain Winchester ammo at 100 yards, using a rock wall for backstop. The target was mounted on a piece of 1/8" signboard and the wall was about 10 feet back. At the first shot, rock fragments came back through the sign board! I couldn't believe they would come back that far, with force enough to penetrate the signboard and was convinced that the round was quite powerful! Since then, we've killed about 6 deer with the .243. Last year, mine was a 140 lb buck at 200 yards, using Hornady 80 grain GMX solid-copper handloads.

I had taken the .243 Tikka T3 Lite because I had to carry a pop-up blind about a half-mile up a hill for relatives coming to hunt in the rain the next day. A nice carrying rifle. The buck appeared in the old road as I was tying off the blind and stood up to look down the road. Using the blind for cover, retrieved the rifle from about 5 yards back. Standing shot...little finger resting on top of the blind to steady the rifle.

 

[Newtosavage]

Study up on what "SD" means to bullets of different diameters and weights and perhaps you will understand why 100 grain bullets work in a .243...

DM

Oh, I know they work fine. I wouldn't have handed my daughter her .243 to take her first deer with if I didn't. A year later, she dropped a big 8 pt. within 20 yards of where he was standing. I just grew up on 30-30's and considered 150's to be "light" most of my life.

I bought that .243 because it was a great deal on a great rifle, and I know how versatile that caliber is. Just need to drop a few deer with it probably, then I won't mind.

 

[CraigC]

Definitely not a fan of the .243. A good varmint cartridge that can serve double duty as a deer/antelope cartridge but nothing more. Sure, you hear plenty of success stories and they invariably accuse any detractors of being poor shooters but on anything bigger than deer, you've completely given away all of your margin for error. Or any opportunity to take a shot with less than perfect presentation.

Probably, a lot of folks who are hunters but not shooters feel like they need to "move up" from the .243 once they hit a certain age. I shot two deer with my M70 Featherweight in .243 with 95gr Ballistic Tips. Small sample size, but I got full penetration and quick kills, not much to complain about. One thing I would change if I got another .243 is that I'd make sure to get one twisted faster than the 1:10 on my M70 so that I could use the heavier bullets.

And I've seen 100gr bullets blow up on a doe's ribcage. And 100gr Core-lokts out of the .250 come completely unglued just a few inches deep. IMHO, all the modern bullets do is make them more reliable at killing deer.

Cow elk, 688 yards, 105 gr 243.

Irresponsible, on many levels.

 

[Newtosavage]

Not sure I saw anyone here advocating for the use of a .243 for anything larger than deer, but maybe I missed it.

I agree with the last statement though. A lot of the new "long range hunting" fad is very irresponsible IMO. Lazy hunters IMO.

 

[tubeshooter]

I bought a used bolt gun in .243 a few years ago for a good deal.


I don't hunt and I haven't shot it much, but it feels good to know that instead of trying to make a .223 shoot ever-heavier bullet weights I can just grab that old .243 if necessary.

 

[FL-NC]

The 243 is my hands-down favorite caliber for white tails. I have a wal mart 700 in 243 that I put in a Boyd's laminate stock. It must have 20 or 25 deer kills on it.

 

[FL-NC]

I wonder if part of the reason is it’s been unfairly tagged as “a good cartridge for women and kids”

Because only weak, puny deer go to the stands where the women and kids are, with the "man size deer" conveniently going to the men's stands, where they are appropriately killed by a custom rifle in a magnum caliber.

 

[CraigC]

Not sure I saw anyone here advocating for the use of a .243 for anything larger than deer, but maybe I missed it.

I agree with the last statement though. A lot of the new "long range hunting" fad is very irresponsible IMO. Lazy hunters IMO.

Uh, the long range video was an elk.

 

[SamT1]

I used to think it was irresponsible to hunt under powered, but really they are just animals (no soul)
We don’t think anything about winging dove flying high and fast or pheasants slightly out of range, most laws in fact require them to be flying when your shoot them. So why would we put a deer or Elk on a pedastal? What puts them into some ethical hunting category that isn’t applied to birds, coyotes, etc.
We need to worry about how horribly people treat people.

 

[CraigC]

We don't do it on purpose either.

 

[Llama Bob]

I wonder if part of the reason is it’s been unfairly tagged as “a good cartridge for women and kids”

I'm not sure that's unfair. I mean if you have a small shooter who's recoil adverse and wants to go after big game, we have a requirement of caliber bigger than .22 here. What are they going to end up with? A .243 or some sort of quarter bore. The quarter bores are all doing poorly in terms of popularity, so it's pretty much going to be a .243.

 

[Llama Bob]

Definitely not a fan of the .243. A good varmint cartridge that can serve double duty as a deer/antelope cartridge but nothing more. Sure, you hear plenty of success stories and they invariably accuse any detractors of being poor shooters but on anything bigger than deer, you've completely given away all of your margin for error. Or any opportunity to take a shot with less than perfect presentation.

I agree with this. You can use .243 reasonably up to deer. It's legal for elk here and people do it and it works poorly. It's very possible to have a perfect heart-lung shot lined up, put it right where you want it, and have the bullet never reach the heart or back lung. An elk with a working heart and one good lung can go a LONG way - like miles.

Even worse is Idaho, where you'll see women and children using .222 for elk. Same problem only worse.

 

[Newtosavage]

Uh, the long range video was an elk.

Yea, I know. I've seen it before. And I agreed with you. But I think there is more common sense on this forum than to think the .243 is a long range elk caliber.

 

[Newtosavage]

SamT1, the only critters I don't really care where I hit are feral pigs, because they breed like cockroaches and need to be exterminated from North America (as if that would ever happen). Everything else I'm striving for a one-shot clean kill. I grew up hunting dove and I won't shoot past 30 yards even today. Usually won't shoot past 20. To each their own. Ethics is a very personal thing.

 

[Legionnaire]

So here is one of the .243s. Bought this Model 7 second hand in a youth birch stock many years ago. It now rides in an HS Precision sporter, with a Leupold Vari-X III 3.5-10x40 in a DNZ mount. Weighs in at 7 pounds 4 ounces as she sits. The group, shot this morning, is just under an inch with factory Federal 95 grain Fusion ammo. Shoots about the same with 100 grain Remington Core-Lokts, so I haven't done any dedicated load development for it yet. That's for the future.

 

[mshootnit]

I once mounted a scope on a .243 Handi-Rifle for a neighbor and sighted it in with 100 grain Winchester ammo at 100 yards, using a rock wall for backstop. The target was mounted on a piece of 1/8" signboard and the wall was about 10 feet back. At the first shot, rock fragments came back through the sign board! I couldn't believe they would come back that far, with force enough to penetrate the signboard and was convinced that the round was quite powerful! Since then, we've killed about 6 deer with the .243. Last year, mine was a 140 lb buck at 200 yards, using Hornady 80 grain GMX solid-copper handloads.

I had taken the .243 Tikka T3 Lite because I had to carry a pop-up blind about a half-mile up a hill for relatives coming to hunt in the rain the next day. A nice carrying rifle. The buck appeared in the old road as I was tying off the blind and stood up to look down the road. Using the blind for cover, retrieved the rifle from about 5 yards back. Standing shot...little finger resting on top of the blind to steady the rifle.

Good times!

 

[Stevenvalleyky]

I agree with this. You can use .243 reasonably up to deer. It's legal for elk here and people do it and it works poorly. It's very possible to have a perfect heart-lung shot lined up, put it right where you want it, and have the bullet never reach the heart or back lung. An elk with a working heart and one good lung can go a LONG way - like miles.

Even worse is Idaho, where you'll see women and children using .222 for elk. Same problem only worse.

I agree and I would NEVER use a 243 for elk. However, if one were to be forced to use a 243 for elk, I would think that a very stout bonded bullet like the accubond or the Interbond, or a monolithic like the GMX would penetrate through both lungs and/or heart on a broadside elk provided the range was reasonable (200yards or less). I would NEVER use a cup and core bullet on an elk if I was using a 243. I also wouldn't shoot any animal bigger than a coyote with a 243 at ranges longer than 200-250 yards. Just too small to have enough energy left at long ranges to make a clean kill.
People shooting big game at 400 yards or more shouldn't and if they do, they should be shooting something with enough ass end to do the job.

 

[Sunray]

"...barrels twisted for heavier bullets..." That'd be pretty much every commercial hunting rifle. Even the so-called 'Varmint" rifles are rifled for deer bullets.
Been using Speer 90 grain FMJ's(bought those after seeing a fox that didn't know I was there.) and 105 grain SP's with IMR4350 for eons myself.
Factory published velocities apply to the rifle, if it was a rifle, used in the tests only. Anyway, velocity isn't as important as accuracy.

 

[Gtscotty]

And I've seen 100gr bullets blow up on a doe's ribcage. And 100gr Core-lokts out of the .250 come completely unglued just a few inches deep. IMHO, all the modern bullets do is make them more reliable at killing deer.

What kind of 100 gr .243 bullets did you have blow up on the doe's ribcage? Do you not think that quarter bores are enough for deer because you saw a junk 100gr bullet come apart? I'm firmly in the camp that bullets matter more than calibers and headstamps, and that If you don't have penetration, you don't have anything. .243s can be on the lower side for penetration if you choose just any old bullet, but there are plenty of options out there that render that a non-issue for deer sized game. The 95gr NBTs I used are well regarded for deer, probably at least partially because they have an unusually thick copper base that helps them penetrate well.

I've had a 130gr bullet from a .270 WSM come apart on the ribs of smaller doe. Four inch entry, full broadside shot and the second lung was untouched. Does that mean that the .270 WSM isn't enough for deer? Of course not, it means that I chose the wrong bullet for that application. If you're not getting through the ribs and making lung soup with broadside shots on deer, something is wrong with your bullet selection.

 

[Varminterror]

I'm not looking for a target rifle centerfire and have only been playing with the .243 Win for a few years, but love it's ability to push 80-85 grain bullets with impressive ballistics and critter-slamming terminal performance for coyote and larger-sized animals. It's also quite accurate in hunting-weight rifles, shows less wind deflection than .22-250, 55 grain bullets and hits hard, even on deer (with the right bullets).

With all the hype over new cartridges, the .243 Win may deserve a second look...as a very flexible cartridge for both hunting and general shooting fun.

With the "long range games" moving already towards 6mm's over the 6.5's which dominated the last few years, the 243win has gotten a lot of looks lately. However, it still suffers from the mag length issues. The long, high ballistic coefficient bullets used in these games are really just too long for the 243win case, so guys are looking at alternatives BASED on the 243win like the 6mm SLR or Comp Match, or either flavor of 243 AI. I have a barrel and reamer for 6 SLR myself. Guys do run 243win's, especially guys who picked up RPR's before the 6 Creed launch. Some guys do make 6XC brass from 243win, or 308 Palma Lapua brass (for the SRP's).

I've always been a fan of the 243win, but it does have drawbacks in these long range precision games. Without modification to the shoulder, it doesn't seem to have the inherent precision common to the fatter, steep shouldered cases, and it does take a few tricks to get it to run as needed with the 105's or better still, the 115's. Guys aren't shooting 87's in matches, at least not guys winning them.

While the 243win is on the heavy side for coyotes inside 100yrds for a guy collecting fur, it's about ideal for a Midwestern Hunter who will spend his days afield after coyotes or deer. I'm not sure there's a more efficient, yet effective whitetail deer hunting factory cartridge on the market.

 

[homers]

100gr nosler partitions - never had a problem with heavy midwest bucks