.243 Opinions

[Stalker69]

Hmm, My Wife has shot 10 or 12 cow elk with her .243 using 100 grain partitions...

Yes, I have used mine on deer and elk as well with 100 gr. partitions. It’s worked wonderfully.

 

[Oldffemt]

95gr ballistic tips for me. I’ve shot antelope from 50-500+ and a pile of whitetails with them. Never had one go more than 20 yards or so. I would avoid the shoulder at all costs though.

 

[heliranger84]

85 gr. Barnes TTSX seem to do the trick for us. My wife shot a nice 6 point bull elk with her .243 a couple years ago. Seemed like penetration and expansion were great. Mule deer are tougher than anot sometimes I've had to put multiple shots in one with 300 Rum with great shot placement.

 

[KRB]

I’ve killed a few Muley’s and a nice bear with my .243. Love it!


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[heliranger84]

Try 80 gr. Barnes TTSX with h4831 let you work up the grains on your own but low 40's good place to start. Been tack driver for us. On 5 different guns/manufacturer

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[Northwinds308]

Just trying to improve the wheel.

The mule deer hunting area in small parcels intermixed with private, the deer have to fall on the correct side of the fence.

I had read that the fusions are pretty tough bullets. Haven't tried em yet.

TTSX was my first inclination - didn't shoot well out of my rifle (4-inch at 200).

Read somewhere that the .243 100 gr Partition doesn't penetrate well. 95 or 85 gr might be better?

Many folks say that once they got away from the 100 gr cup & cores, the bullets performed better.

For the Barnes give this a try before you write them off.

1. Clean your barrel. They use a different alloy than guilding metal used on most jackets and it does affect performance. I had a rifle that wouldn't shoot them under 2 inches. Cleaned it, shot a few foulers... Low and behold it was a 1.1 MOA rifle again (about all I can coax out of it, it's an ultralight).

2. Do your ladder test then take the most accurate step on your ladder and play with your seating depth, if you can. Mine are loaded 2.855" in a .308 right now which is 0.050 off the lands in my rifle and will still feed from the magazine. This has given me much better results than the 2.810" stated in the reloading manual.

They're a good bullet just keep the impact velocities high.

The Federal Fusions aren't as tough as the Barnes. They're quite a bit softer. They're electroplated so it's a softer lead with the jacket bonded to it, rather than a monometal.

Your performance sounds like it was fine and you have a sample size of 1. You could get different reactions shot to shot with the same bullet on the same day.

Hell I've seen a big mule deer buck take 5 rounds of 2 different calibers and different bullets through the vitals and made it 600 meters before he piled up and died. No bullshit. Wouldn't have believed it if I wasn't there.

 

[Northwinds308]

+1. Too many people still focus on weight retention and penetration. Load up some Berger classic hunters, shoot them in the neck or high shoulder and watch them drop.

There's often a reason for that. I've seen a moose take 4 rounds of 7mm Rem Mag Berger's and the only reason it didn't make it into the lake was a headshot. We gutted it out and they hadn't penetrated to the far lung.

Ask one of the more experienced Canadian or Alaskan guys how far a moose will run on one lung.

 

[KineKilla]

My son shot his first mule deer with a .243 @ 320yds using good old Green and Yellow's (100gr Core-Lokt). Deer stumbled about 40 yards and went down stone dead. I couldn't ask for better performance from the hunter or the bullet.