Thread: Suppressing a .243

Have a Remington sps in 243, 24'' barrel and have been developing hand loads for it with hornady 87 grain hpbt and hornady 95 grain sst. Have found that maybe it doesn't like the boat tail bullets so switched to 95 grain flat based with slightly better results. Wanted to try the hornady 87 grain softpoint flat base but unavailable at the moment. The gun is bedded with a 2 lb trigger. Best groups 1 1/4'' with 95s using 42grains of 2209, thinking now of cutting the barrel back to 20 or 21 inches and suppressing it with an over barrel DPT can. I think a shorter stiffer barrel may be the go and develop loads from there. Question is what are others opinion on the barrel length and experience with this combo, I don't want to go shorter than 20'' the twist is 1 in 9 1/4 I think.

I had my ATR in 243 cut back to 20". Use a DPT can, and my handloads Hornady 87 gr HPBT. The rifle loves them, it's my rabbits to reds load. If I miss, it sure ain't the rifle !

Run 75 Sako with GW can and 85gr Sierra HP. Very accurate . No noise. Bang flop.

thanks guys so you think cutting barrel to 20inch wont affect the velocity too much. So I figure cutting the barrel will improve and not diminish the accuracy potential.

Hi, sometime cutting a barrel back can be a hit and miss. It will change the harmonics, often in a good way sometime is doesn't not achieve anything, specially on a factory barrel that could be shooting average for other reasons or imperfections.
All you can do is try. I suggest you try getting it cut at 21". Test it with a few different loads or doing a ladder test.see how it goes. If the groups are very promising then cut it back at 20" . If not, cut it back just 1/4 of inch or 1/2" at a time , in case it got cut on a bad spot.
Sometime it can take up to 30 rounds of shooting and cleaning to get the accuracy back after a recrown, so don't get to scared after only a few rounds of testing after a fresh recut.
Bedding your rifle action in the stock is avery important step before you carry any test IMO .
Good luck.

Our barrel is 20in. Just had screw put on for can. All deer die so can't be too slow eh?

Yeah I was thinking cut to 21 inches and with the can on would make it 25 inches overall. I recently had a weatherby cut to 21 from 24 and with hand loads instantly got very promising results with minimal development using 150game kings and 155 amaxs. It seems my 243 is bit of a problem child and always has been so have nothing to lose. If it still doesn't achieve what im after probably a rebarrel with a quality barrel.