fireside44
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Yes sir. For rifles I've loaded 308, 444 marlin, 45-70, 300 win mag, and .223.
243 for big game at 300-350 yards?
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Yes sir. For rifles I've loaded 308, 444 marlin, 45-70, 300 win mag, and .223.
Olympus
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Anyone that tells you a 243 doesn’t kill effectively at 50 yards either doesn’t have a clue about what they are talking about or they are using the wrong bullet. Simple as that. Either wrong bullet or they don’t know their backside from a hole in the ground. Take a 30-06 with an FMJ bullet at 50 yards and you’ll just poke a 30 caliber hole in the deer which will run a long way with little to no blood trail before eventually expiring. Same thing, poor bullet choice.
A majority of my deer were taken at under 75 yards with a 243. That’s just the conditions that I hunt. That SST bullet penetrates then expends a massive amount of its energy inside the body cavity before exiting, even at 50 yards. And guys that complain about having to use “premium” bullets in the 243 as an excuse not to use the caliber seem ridiculous I’m my opinion. If you’re that much of a cheapskate, then you should find another hobby! Factory Hornady 243 ammo with the 95gr SST sells for $1.25/round or less than $0.50/round if you reload. And I’d have to really think about it, but every deer I’ve ever killed has been taken with a bullet weight of 120gr or less.
A majority of my deer were taken at under 75 yards with a 243. That’s just the conditions that I hunt. That SST bullet penetrates then expends a massive amount of its energy inside the body cavity before exiting, even at 50 yards. And guys that complain about having to use “premium” bullets in the 243 as an excuse not to use the caliber seem ridiculous I’m my opinion. If you’re that much of a cheapskate, then you should find another hobby! Factory Hornady 243 ammo with the 95gr SST sells for $1.25/round or less than $0.50/round if you reload. And I’d have to really think about it, but every deer I’ve ever killed has been taken with a bullet weight of 120gr or less.
You're on a right track here. Hydrodynamic (sometimes erroneously called hydrostatic) shock is a great substitute or supplement to permanent wound cavity, and the severity of the shock is proportional to the square of velocity change caused by non-compressible tissue. When a fast, high energy bullet mushrooms rapidly several inches inside the tissue, the temporary wound cavity can be very large.
OTOH, I can't explain why the effect hasn't happened at an equivalent regularity with larger high velocity calibers. Tougher, slower opening bullets that won't create a similar pressure peak in tissue, maybe?
I've shot whitetails with lots of different calibers and my highly unscientific observations emphasize the importance of bullet placement. The longest average running distances have taken place with .44Mag, shortest with .308 and 12ga slug. Rarely do they run more than 10-20 yards unless you *honk* up the shot yourself.
I'd strongly recommend either loading up the sst or an 85 gr gameking (either 4166 or 4831sc for a moderate but not hot velocity) in the .243 for your situation. Were I consistently presented with the opportunities you describe, these would be my choice.
At the risk of an educational derailment, when you say "hasn't happened at an equivalent regularity with larger high velocity calibers," can you expand on that? I'm not quite I'm following, I've not seen a lack of consistency in cartridges clear up through .338 win mag to provide devastating temporary wound cavities......
This is not a contradiction or an attempt at debate, just looking for clarification and to try to discern between possible unique circumstances/anomalies and perhaps specifics that I simply don't encounter due to personal preference in projectile choice/impact velocity etc......
mustanger98
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All the deer I've shot across my backyard were inside 100yds; 200's a long shot in my part of the country. While I've never seen the 350yds shot present itself, the deer I've killed with a .243 went down real fast... Win. 100gr PowerPoint. I've seen other local .243 users have very similar results.
Why is it the .243Win. gets labeled a ineffective women/kids thing in a crowd where so many try to act like their .223 AR-15's are so big and bad? "Mine's bigger than yours" combined with a type of short guy syndrome from guys who can't handle minimal recoil? Hmmm...
Why is it the .243Win. gets labeled a ineffective women/kids thing in a crowd where so many try to act like their .223 AR-15's are so big and bad? "Mine's bigger than yours" combined with a type of short guy syndrome from guys who can't handle minimal recoil? Hmmm...
The "why" has already been fairly addressed, but honestly the simple answer is that you have to understand your weapon for it to be effective, many have not understood the .243, used it improperly in one way or another, and when it did not perform as THEY expected due to their lack of enlightenment, of course it was the cartridge that took the blame. I've seen it happen often with several chamberings, but the .243 is possibly the most infamous.
Neither have I personally. I was referring to Varminterror's earlier comment:
Varminterror said:
I live on the Big Island, but was home on Molokai for a week.
We have deer of some sort on all but 2 of the islands.....course one has to be were I live now.....
I started hunting/harvesting with an 06, cause that's what my dad had when he was stationed in Texas. My second rifle was also an 06, and my third a 7 mag.
I also had a .223 for doing damage control shooting, mostly at night.
I eventually switched to using a .22lr for night shooting, and the .223 for shooting around the farm.
I also handloaded, and ran softer than normal bullets from my guns, mostly 165 balistic tips and early 139 sat. The .223 go fed cheap American Eagle 50gr hollow points for the most part.
My larger rounds blew gaping holes, and we're what I used when I was out of my comfort zone, but the .223 and it's cheap little 50s, almost always caused nearly instant incapacitation on heart/lung, and double lung shots.
I didn't even own a .243 till I was in my late 20s, but i shot a pile of goats and sheep when I got mine. I shot a few Axis deer as well, I lost one due to my own poor choices in shot placement, tho a larger cartridge/caliber may have made the difference on that one.
Besides that one deer and a goat from hell that ate 2 rounds from my .243, and 3 from my buddies .308, everything else pretty much folded up on the spot.
My wife also shot a large feral cow at about 60yds thru the heart. It wobbled a couple steps then went face first into the deepest mud puddle it could find.
This was all with relatively slow 100gr PSPs (Sierra, Hornady, and Wins) at 2800fps, this matched what my gun got with cheap Winchester and Remington ammo. I'd tried other loads, but thats what i have the most experience with, and I think not running those 100s upto 2950-3k was short changing the performance of the cartridge, or at least not killing as quickly as it could.
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lateral velocity of the expanding bullet will be a lot less due to the much larger (percentage wise) surface area of the bullet. terminal energy of the larger bullet would have to be much higher to get the larger bullet to expand at the same velocity as the 243 win pill. i'm assuming the resisting force of the tissue always stays the same regardless the bullet.
so the shock wave to the system will be less intense with the larger diameter bullet (i'm assuming longitudinal effect too small to matter).
luck,
murf
On the shock delivery of the small fast rounds, I think it MIGHT be a bit about bullet design and momentum. Larger rounds are usually made with thicker (tho perhaps not proportionally thicker) jackets, and greater initial mass may push thru farther as a single lump.
I tend to look for loads that launch a heavy weight, tipped target bullet, at around 3k. what I generally see at short range is explosive expansion, turning into more of a cone as distance increases.
Short range exits tend to be stupendous, OR a single smallish hole, depending on angle and thickness of the target. Outside of 100-150yds exits are usually quite large but it shows less initial violent expansion, which leads me to believe it just takes a little longer for the bullets I use to come apart as velocity drops.
Bullets that don't violently open tend to produce tunnels in my experience, which while exceedingly lethal, do not always cause sudden incapacitation.
in review....Murf types faster than me, and makes more sense......
I tend to look for loads that launch a heavy weight, tipped target bullet, at around 3k. what I generally see at short range is explosive expansion, turning into more of a cone as distance increases.
Short range exits tend to be stupendous, OR a single smallish hole, depending on angle and thickness of the target. Outside of 100-150yds exits are usually quite large but it shows less initial violent expansion, which leads me to believe it just takes a little longer for the bullets I use to come apart as velocity drops.
Bullets that don't violently open tend to produce tunnels in my experience, which while exceedingly lethal, do not always cause sudden incapacitation.
in review....Murf types faster than me, and makes more sense......
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fireside44
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I appreciate the recommendation. I have only run Rem Core-Lokt through it knowing it is probably not the best choice of ammo but I had many boxes of it and gun stuff was not priority and at the time it was my only rifle. I was doing some digging in my ammo stash and found a box of Hornady .243 SST 95 grain next to some .308 zombie max I thought I sold, lol. I just might dig out that rifle since I will have five tags and test that ammo inside 50 yards on a deer. As a comparison I just ran down to Academy and they had Hornady Black x39 123 grain SST. Never seen that stuff before so I grabbed a box. I also found some lighter soft point Tula in my stash, 124 grain I think. I kinda planned on taking two or three deer this season so maybe I'll do a fun comparison of these when season opens. Maybe my core-lokt are getting too much penetration and not enough expansion at short range as I never recover even fragment and the exit hole is fairly small.
I left out the "thickness" effect but loonwolf caught it well. thinness can compensate for larger diameter in lateral velocity.
murf
p.s. i'm not just pulling this out of my backside. I base this on the idea of "hoop stress". a bullet is just a small hoop in the lateral sense.
murf
p.s. i'm not just pulling this out of my backside. I base this on the idea of "hoop stress". a bullet is just a small hoop in the lateral sense.
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Varminterror
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I’ve not taken the time to section and mic the jackets, or do stress modeling in CAD, but I tend to assume the “lightly constructed” bullets in larger calibers are proportionately tougher.
There may also be a contribution of proportionate ogive.
I can theorize about a great number of things, but then document faults in each theory. Either way, the observed effect when shooting similarly constructed bullets from a 22 cal or 6mm into game, the larger calibers put the center of the temporary cavity farther through the game and does damage proportionately more on the backside, and the game often travels farther. I started using poly-tipped bullets over 20yrs ago in 30cal, and while I am very happy with their performance in all calibers I have used them, they still don’t drop game quite the same as using the same type of bullet in a high speed 6mm.
There may also be a contribution of proportionate ogive.
I can theorize about a great number of things, but then document faults in each theory. Either way, the observed effect when shooting similarly constructed bullets from a 22 cal or 6mm into game, the larger calibers put the center of the temporary cavity farther through the game and does damage proportionately more on the backside, and the game often travels farther. I started using poly-tipped bullets over 20yrs ago in 30cal, and while I am very happy with their performance in all calibers I have used them, they still don’t drop game quite the same as using the same type of bullet in a high speed 6mm.
Deymonay
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Barnes! Or any other monolithic bullet. I definitely think a 243 is capable of thin skinned game at those ranges, the barnes bullets retain basically 100% of their weight and punch higher than their weight class. Best thing to do is load up a batch, and see how far you can reliably hit a 6in plate. I knock 50 yards off that distance and use that to judge whether or not I should take a shot.
Good luck and shoot straight!
Good luck and shoot straight!
I see your point, out of curiosity, stemmed from personal experiences, have you tried the browning bxr line?
For what it's worth, with both corelokt and powershoks, they are nothing I make light of, but they are definitely something I put in the "penetration over expansion" box. They're GREAT if you wanna blow through both shoulders, and the exit WILL be something that catches your attention, but for the no heavy bone boiler room, softer bullets get better results.
Varminterror
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I haven’t. I rarely shoot factory ammo, and other than seeing it on the shelf at my local cabela’s, I wouldn’t have known they were making the BXR ammo.
Hazarding a guess, does the polymer bonded copper-dust tip fracture like a safety slug, instead of driving itself through the rest of the bullet almost perfectly intact like a conventional polymer tip?
Sounds "tougher" to me.
OP
OP
357smallbore
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I just shoot Federals blue box
stillquietvoice
Contributing Member
I've used rem premium sirocco 90 gr, fed fusion 95 gr factory loads on three whitetails all drt inside of 75 yds. One was shot in between 3 trees. It wrapped around a fourth behind it. I shot a couple more with 100 gr prohunters and gamekings with similar results. My reloads were pushed with Max charges of imr 4350.
A buddy of mine brought some out a couple seasons back, and yes, in theory, the tip disintegrates to provide rapid expansion....... my initial thought was "oh look another ballistic tip"........yes and no....they're very violent, I would like to get them as components because I don't buy factory ammo either anymore but WOULD like to see them at my press. @LoonWulf would definitely appreciate them I think, they're right in the grenade first, maybe exit later category, not a splash wound, but definitely more explosive than what I've gotten a 95 gr nb tip to do outta the .243 so far. ...perhaps more similar to a berger.... (at least the small sample of bergers I've played with so far).
Eta this was from the .270 at 30 yds.
d2wing
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Bullet performance is next to shot placement. I use a 7-08 as I think it has a wider envelope of performance. Some folks use bullets on Whitetails that are much better suited to much bigger game. Bullets that do not expand fully in the target therefor the energy is wasted in thin air. Deer are usually less than a foot thick in the kill zone. A bullet that doesn't expand in 4-6 inches and retain weight is not as useful even if it is bigger. I shake my head at folks that use 180 grain tough bullets on deer. I actually like 55 grain soft point .223's at closer ranges. That's why they were invented. I also prefer heart shots as nothing survives a serious heart wound. Anything else is iffy.
I pulled a bullet from decent size buck where the wound had healed up completely. From investigation it was likely a 165 balistic tip from either mine or my buddies gun (both were shooting 06s) round hit high lung, missed ribs and stoped under the off side shoulder. likely just dinged one or both lungs.
The round that killed it was also a 165 balistic from my 06....soooo I'm either wrong about who shot the animal first, or something weird happened.
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