243 Ammo for whitetail

.243

I like the Fusion factory loaded ammo.....two shots = two deer , it worked for me ! :) I'm sure all the premium bullets like for example; Nosler , Barnes , and Trophy are great stuff....just haven't tried them yet in the .243 caliber !
 
jlove1974 said:
But the cap and ball revolver has killed alot of men in the civil war, but I don't see alot of military and LEOs carrying it anymore. I think they were both designed around the same time, right?
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The cap and ball revolver can still do the job and there are lot of them in use in the Cowboy game. Actually, the Model 1860 was trotted out in ... wait for it... 1860.

The first successful jacketed bullet is credited to a Swiss officer, Eduard Rubin, in 1882, over two decades after the Model 1860.

The Remington Core-Lokt, as far as I can tell, was introduced right after WWII, sometime during the 1940s.

I agree that there are better bullets nowadays than the standard Core-Lokt, but deer aren't any tougher than they were 70 years ago. It's interesting that you should mention cap-and-ball, because I regularly hunt with a cap-and-ball rifle. I use a patched round ball, which is pre civil war, and it kills deer just fine. The last one I shot with it simply fell over, a bang-flop. I didn't recover the ball, but I wouldn't think that it expanded. It entered at the base of her neck just above the brisket, glanced off the spine, destroyed the right lung, then traveled through the paunch, broke her hip and went whistling off thru the pines after exiting her left ham. I shot thru the length of her and that was with a soft lead ball. Virtually no BC, slow velocity, and I doubt it expanded at all. Still, she was just as dead as if I'd hit her with the newest wonder-bullet. The modern percussion cap was introduced in 1839, so I killed that deer with 1840s technology. It worked just fine.
 
PawPaw said:
It worked just fine.
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I'm quite sure that there's more to "working just fine" for most people than being able to kill a deer.

My bow kills them just fine but I don't keep using it when gun season starts. My Encore handgun kills them just fine but I don't keep using it when I'm in rifle zones. My Glock 33 will kill them just fine but I don't use it for my primary weapon.

Lots of things kill deer. That's not the point.

Core-Lokt's have killed thousands, probably 100s of thousands. Lots of other bullets have too. That doesn't mean that one is not more reliable than another or effective at longer range or less prone to fragmenting or penetrates better...
 
Peetza said:
Core-Lokt's have killed thousands, probably 100s of thousands. Lots of other bullets have too. That doesn't mean that one is not more reliable than another or effective at longer range or less prone to fragmenting or penetrates better...
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Concur.
 
At a time when I used my 243 on deer. I preferred Remington 80-gr. PSP. Fast, flat shooting, and hard hitting out of my Ruger 77. Never cared to use anyone's store bought 100 gr bullet ammo. Stuff didn't seem to work out for me in what I expected of it. (had to track deer a fair distance too often when shot with those 100 gr bullets) 80-85 gr. bullets on the other hand. Those deer succumbed to there wound within 20 yards or less usually. (rib shot most often made by me)
 
We've used the Remington CL 100 gr and the Nosler Partition.......both work but I will admit that if bone, hard bone like a leg ( not just shoulder plate ) is hit the CL deforms more.

This one was taken with the Remington. Bullet cliped the left leg and one rib and ended up just under the skin on the oposite side. I did not weigh it but it was in one piece and about double, maybe more, in size from expansion.

While I'll admit that I personally like my bullet to pass through ( My .35 Rem almost always does.......but then unless he is close and a proper shot I don't bother shooting. ) I will also say that she has shot a bunch of hogs, which are not really harder to kill just maybe a little more sturdy if they are big, and bullet failure has not been a problem.


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I've been saving my .243 brass for a while ... also bought some new. But I won't be experimenting much until I finish shooting up my remaining Rem CLs and some cheap Federal 100 gr SPs. None of the game hit with either has required a second shot.
 
I've been a bit leery to try ballistic tips or anything along that line. Seems like they work fine for some people, but we have not had great success with them. Two years ago my brother shot a big doe at 60 yards. It was a perfect broadside shot and we figured dead deer right? There was initially some blood, but it soon petered out. Spent a lot of time looking for that doe, but never found it. The best guess we can come up with is that the bullet hit the shoulder and fragmented with no piece penetrating the vitals. He was using Hornady SST.
 
Most likely, he made a bad shot. Deer are small, narrow, thin-skinned and light-boned. Virtually any bullet that hits them forward of the diaphragm will kill them quickly. Exceptions, yes, but most "I don't know what happened!" are bad shots, not bullet problems.
 
My daughters Savage rifle in .243 knocks them dead every time using 100gr Winchester PowerPoint ammo. Every one that has been shot with that bullet has died in thier tracks.
 
Two years ago my brother shot a big doe at 60 yards. It was a perfect broadside shot and we figured dead deer right? There was initially some blood, but it soon petered out. Spent a lot of time looking for that doe, but never found it. The best guess we can come up with is that the bullet hit the shoulder and fragmented with no piece penetrating the vitals. He was using Hornady SST.
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60 yards? What caliber?

With impact velocities in excess of 3K f/sec, bullets designed to expand at longer ranges can come apart rather easily. I hit a buck at 15 feet one time with a .270WIN 130 gr Winchester Silvertip (the old kind, with the aluminum point, since discontinued). The bullet hit a rib behind the shoulder and exploded, leaving a large shallow wound. The deer died after running 100+ yards alright, but if the bullet had hit the upper leg bone or shoulder joint, I am not sure it would have been fatal- the bullet would have spent it's energy on the outside of the chest cavity instead of trashing 1/2 of one lung as it did ....

I have since switched to 150 gr bullets at a more moderate velocity (2900 f/sec) ..... but with a better BC. In similar situations, they have penetrated 12-18", even if they came apart, yet still will punch through both sides of a deer at 400+ yards with good expansion.....

Based on my experiences, I would suggest a heavy for caliber bullet, 100gr or better for the .243 ...... 87 gr at 3.2 K just seems a recipe for the hickey from hell ..... unless you go to a solid or bonded bullet.... and then you are looking at either passing up all frontal/quartering shots or dealing with messy field dressing scenarios.....
 
That could be why we've had good luck with SST's. We shoot them in the heart/lung area or neck.
We dont shoot them in the shoulder. You ruin a lot of meat meant for sausage or jerky.
Brians right about the "I dont know what happened". Just a bad shot. Deer are easy to take down.


Please, DONT buy SST's. I'm the only one thats had good luck with them.
 
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jimbob86 said:
Based on my experiences, I would suggest a heavy for caliber bullet, 100gr or better for the .243 ...... 87 gr at 3.2 K just seems a recipe for the hickey from hell ..... unless you go to a solid or bonded bullet.... and then you are looking at either passing up all frontal/quartering shots or dealing with messy field dressing scenarios.....
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I don't understand what you're getting at here. Quartering shots require the most penetration, which is the specialty of bullets like the GMX and TTSX line but you're saying those are the shots you'd pass on if you used those bullets? Those are the shots those bullets are BUILT for making. I've never passed on a shot because the gut job might be messy. That's just part of the game.
 
My daughter has dropped some nice deer with her .243, using winchester greybox in 100 grn.
As far as those copped bullets go, we havent tried those dudes yet.
And as long as this topic gets discussed ther will always be different opines.
Greybox 100 grainers, try em. you too Brian.
 
Thanks a lot Reloader28, if you are the only one who buys them, they will quit making them. Of course there would be lots of leftovers on the clearance/shelf, OK you win.

I have helped track quite a few deer that were "shot broadside", by and large a broadside shot at the shoulder with any decent caliber will kill it, however when the bullet goes low and only strikes leg bone you will get a decent blood trail for 50-75 yards I mean one that makes you think its a done deal, then it begins to thin out quickly and disappears completely and you never see the deer again. They are worse than gutshots, at least if you stick with it you can often find them dead, but leg shots clot up quickly. Without a "body" to look at you don't know for sure what happened. I've seen several deer that were shot with a .243 and bullets I pesonally wouldn't use, specifically lighter weight HP varmit bullets but they were still dead, no exit wound but dead just the same, usually not far from where they were shot.

I do know that Ballistic Tips shot from a 7mm Rem Mag at short range (less than 50 yards) will put a deer down, stone cold dead, a little messy but very very dead. Any guessing at what happened on a shot that resulted in no dead deer is just that a guess. What Barnes XBT's I have shot are phenomenal penetrators, I used to shoot them out of my 7-08 Rem, 120 grain XBT's from several different angles , none of the bullets cared, hit (and from the looks of the insides) expand, and go right on, tremendous blood trails right to a dead deer. Rather than worry about exactly which "normal" bullet is the best, worry about which one the rifle likes, because if you put a 100 grain Hornady, Sierra, Speer, Cor-lokt whatever though the vitals of a deer you're gonna have to skin a deer.

Reloading is where it gets fun, so many choices that will work great, like being a kid in a candy store, nearly everthing is delicious you just have to pick what you like.:)
 
Quartering shots require the most penetration, which is the specialty of bullets like the GMX and TTSX line but you're saying those are the shots you'd pass on if you used those bullets? Those are the shots those bullets are BUILT for making. I've never passed on a shot because the gut job might be messy. That's just part of the game.
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You are playing the game differently than I am, then: I shoot deer in order to eat them. Scattering poo and soon to be poo through the body cavity and beyond does not make for good table fare, IMO ..... YMMV, but I'd rather pass up the shot than season the meat with that stuff.
 
I guess my mileage does vary. I've seen quite a number a deer that were hit through the guts. The only ones that were really nasty were those that took a long time to die or especially those that were dead for a long time before they were gutted. Those shots were all accidental. The intentional, sharp angle shots have never been a problem.

Meat washes too. ;)
 
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