Thread: The gentlemen’s caliber

Here we go all you .243 advocates. I personally own a .243 but have yet to use it versus an animal.

Sing her praises. Why is she your caliber of choice?

I use a .243 because I’m a pussy and developed a terrible flinch with higher calibers

I wasn't really looking for one but went into the local one day and there was a savage 243 with a weaver on it for 450$ so it hopped in my car and followed me home got it cut a little bit and put a can on it shot it with some factory ammo and it wasn't anything to get excited about then fiddeled around with hand loads it didn't like heavy pills so got plenty of those left over once I found a pill it liked it shoots nice little clover leafs its been on a few goat hunts and its been good havnt tried it on deer as I don't have much luck in that department 200m or less is about my limit for deer as I like stalking in that's when I see one its my second go to rifle when I don't take one of the 6.5s

Same as berg got a flinc and the .243 fixed it. Have steeped up to a 7X57 because I wanted to go old school
Took my .243 back to NZ for trips home. Knocks over all the stuff I’ve shot at (and hit)
Might even buy another as I’ve got pills and dies so year why not

Shot my first stag with one

@gimp what was the old RATGB saying???

I everything I shoot with it dies. Low recoil, easy to find ammo. pleasant to shoot. Great for wife and kids.

The 6mm Remington is a better cartridge I have tried 4 .243's over the years none performed as good as the 6mm Rem once you try a 6mm Rem you won't go back to a .243

I liked it when I had one. Will have a 6mm something or other in future with a fast twist barrel for the heavies

Have used a .243 for many years, never let me down but have let it down an odd time, BUT I prefer the 257 Roberts.

Was not my fav that was for sure
But I think it was me and not the caliber - as my mate shot 2-3000 Deer in Ruahine with one and was on his 3rd barrel
I think my shoulder shots (most time where aimed) was back a bit far - but I lost Deer after Deer with it - more smaller frame animals than the likes of Stags

My 243AI. Smacked over a fair few good bulls with this rifle, they hated it.

Originally Posted by Taticalclevage

I use a .243 because I’m a pussy and developed a terrible flinch with higher calibers

Oof shots fired already

I think I have seen many type ups in favour of the .243 by @Flyblown

Ah yes @Sako 851... the .243 and me are best buddies. Go make yourself a cuppa and sit back...

Reading the above, @Sarvo nailed it with his comment "I think my shoulder shots (most time where aimed) was back a bit far". Any small calibre rifle can be very unforgiving if you don't hit 'em just right. But the bullet is really important too, it has to be the right balance of frangible with a stout base to push through. So to that end, the .243 Win needs to be used quite carefully.

Some family history. My old grandpa was a .243 Win man from his days here in the ‘50s building hydro dams. He got a Sako L57 imported when they were first released, which would have been ’57 or ’58, and used it here until he went to Canada in ’63. He learnt his NZ deer hunting from the local Forestry guys, he was a precision man through and through, head, neck, high shoulder, hilar. He took all that experience to Canada and got given quite a hard time from the big bore guys, primarily because he wandered around in bear country with a ‘pea shooter’ and an old revolver. Fair enough.

When it was me and my cuzzies’ turn in the ‘80s, there was only one option, the .243 Winchester. There were a couple of Brno ZKK601s in the family by then. We were drilled hard from the beginning on anatomy and to take your time and very carefully select the shot with the maximum probability of bang-flopping the deer. And you had to know what specifically it was that was causing the deer to collapse. This was mostly on little roe deer in little fields on the edge of woodland. Occasionally we’d find some fallow, and once or twice a year we’d go chase lowland reds down in Devon. You didn’t want a runner because you couldn’t afford the deer to make it onto someone else’s land. We use sticks a fair bit, but practiced mostly sitting, using the sling to steady the aim. A forward point of aim, put it into the chest in line with the front leg, either in the shoulder or just below. Runners just weren’t an issue.

A lot of our learning flew right in the face of English tradition. I remember getting a really hard time shooting roe in the high shoulder by local stalkers, who preferred the heart shot in the crease. They were always prattling on about meat damage, but so often they’d go high and get the rear lungs, and the deer would be off on a half-marathon. It wasn’t my place as a pimply squirt to tell them they were doing it wrong, so I left that to the old man…

We always used a 100gr+ soft point bullet. The most popular my early days, simply because there was a massive stash of them in the shed, was the Speer 105gr round nose, which wasn’t loaded particularly fast but smacked deer into the next life with no fuss or bother whatsoever. Later we used Sierra ProHunters and over time, these took over. When I moved to South Africa I bought a CZ in .243 and proceeded to upset lots of Afrikaners by shooting dozens of biltong boks in the neck with my little rifle, they were all into much heavier bullets and bigger bangsticks and quite a lot of unnecessary drama. I was treated with disdain being a Soutie, probably because I pinched their girlfriends more than my choice of cartridge.

In the US, I was with my cuzzies for the most part, and they came from the same school as me, so all good. They moved onto fast twist .243s quite a few years ago for their coyote shooting, 105gr A-Max and now ELD-M. They do some fully hard case winter shooting with those rifles and bullets, 600m+ no sweat.

Contrary to a lot of internet forum nonsense that gets written by blokes who copy what someone else said, the .243 Winchester was designed to shoot 100gr bullets from the get go. It was released in 1955 with the 1:10” twist, with two bullet weights, 100gr for deer sized game, and 80gr for varmints. Winchester basically pinched the idea from Warren Page, who had touted his .240 Super Pouper wildcat to them as a deer cartridge, with the option of going lighter for varmints. Winchester faked a lack interest, but decided to build a deer / varmint 6mm cartridge anyway, without telling him, which he never forgave them for. Page also went to his mates at Remington and they picked up on it, but decided it would sell better as a varmint cartridge first and foremost with the option of being able to take a deer. So they released the .244 Remington in the same year, but with the 1:12” twist and 70gr and 90gr bullets.

The market judged the .244 Rem harshly, and it got comprehensively out sold by the .243 Win, and as you probably know Remington changed the .244 to a 1:10” twist and renamed it the 6mm Remington. From day one, the .243 Winchester was a deer cartridge – read any of the books from that era and it is made plain that the varmint aspect of the rifle was quite minimally used, as most yankee doodles went with the super-fast .224s for fluffy varmints, .220 Swift, .22-250, later the .223. They didn’t really see the need for using twice the powder for the same outcome, which was aerial splattery.

The original 100gr bullets readily stabilsed in 1:10” twist barrels. These were the flat-based Western Super-X, Western being a subsidiary of Winchester. They were slightly shorter than similar bullets today. The reason a lot of guys complain that 100gr bullets aren’t that great in their 1:10” twist rifles is because today’s 6mm 100gr bullets tend to be slightly longer and are pushing the limits of stability, especially the boat-tails. Use a flat-based 100gr bullet, traditional soft point, it should be fine. Sierra ProHunters, Speer round nose, Hornday round nose and Interlocks etc have been deadly accurate in all my .243s.

I use my .243 Win for red deer more than any of my other rifles. Just like the old man taught, its precision shots for CNS, no off hand snap shots. It’s not a good choice for off-hand snap shots, that’s what I use my .308 for. I shoot prone, taking reds and fallow with base of skull / atlas vertebrae shots if they are at rest out to say 200m, high shoulder shots if they are browsing but still, hilar shots if they are a bit further away. The maximum effective range is around about 350m for a yearling red or fallow, that’s right on the limit and not a shot I’d take unless it was dead still and there was a good reason. But once you know your drops inside out, and you’ve proven to yourself that you and the bullet will do comfy sub-MOA and the windage is good, a frangible bullet like the ProHunter will deal to a deer no worries.

The reason I like the .243 Win so much is because of the mild manners. You don’t need a 150gr bullet to kill a deer with any of my preferred shots, what you need is precision. A lot of the country I shoot is steep and all over the place, so a good rest can be hard to come by and I don’t want to have to worry about recoil, I want to shoot with light hands.

But you can bet your last dollar that if you hit a red deer broadside high through the rear lungs with a .243 Win, you’re gonna get a long runner. But that’s the same for pretty much any calibre / cartridge. Just consult the YouTube List of FuckUps for all the little deer that run away when shot high and too far back…

Couple of final things I’d add about the .243 Win. Firstly, I’ve never loaded it hot for deer. My 100gr ProHunters have always been in the 2800-2850fps range, whereas a lot of the factory 100gr ammo is running around 3000fps, and some reloaders will try and push it faster. It’s not necessary for it to be screaming fast, for a traditional cup and core soft point to work effectively, you want a good balance of penetration and fragmentation.

Secondly, I never use a “hard” bullet in .243 Win. I rely on the fragmentation to create a wide radius of wounding with the maximum chance of hitting CNS and pulmonary arteries. I’ve never had a ProHunter “blow up” on a shoulder blade, its spot on for our deer. But if the shooter demands a good blood trail then you’ll need a rethink, because at 150-300m you’ll be lucky if the 6mm ProHunter exits. I almost always find the base up against the opposite side hide having passed through both shoulders and jellified the front lungs, pulmonary veins and nerve plexus, the latter being what puts them done so fast. Hit that, it’s done in a heartbeat. So the way I look at it, why need a blood trail? Just aim to put them on the deck. Once the confidence is there, the incidence of long runners is very low, and if one does run, it’ll be spewing bright red frothy lung blood from its nose.

Lastly, I use 75gr V-Max for head shooting goats, and they are loaded hot for fast, flat shooting. Enough said about the terminal effects of them the better – horror movie stuff.

So yeah, I’m a big fan. That comes from experience I guess, I know its capabilities but also its limits. It’s by no means infallible, and shot placement is critical. The naysayers generally develop their opinion from trying to shoot them behind the shoulder, that’s been my experience of the pushback.