243 Question!?

P

parkerd

New member
Hello all.. I'm saving up money for a new rifle not 100% sure what caliber I wanna go with though.. I live in FL and I'm no fan of heavy recoil.. I like a gun that can kill and not leave bruises on my shoulder if I want to just shoot at the range.. Anyways back to the question would a 95 Grain bullet to the head on a hog kill it? I know that hog's have that very thick shoulder plate my dad killed one recently weighed like 250lbs and man was that a pain to drag out :rolleyes: So would it kill or would it bounce off? ;)


Thanks,Parker
 
I'm not a hog hunter, but I do know the .243 is a stout round for such a small bullet, and with almost recoil if that matters. I hunt white tail with it and it's my favorite caliber.
 
Even a .22 short to the soft spot behind the ear will kill a pig. A .243 is quite sufficient for both deer and pigs that are found in FL - as long as are good with shot placement. That being said however, I do tend to prefer a little heavier bullet than the light stuff that a .243 shoots.

If you are recoil adverse and want a more effective round, the felt recoil of a 7mm-08 (big brother to a .243) is only a tad more noticible and you get a much more versitile 140grn bullet.
 
243 Question

Never hunted a hog. I have a friend that killed quite a few black bear with a .243 and he used Nosler partition bullets. Numerous videos of people shooting Hogs with .223 caliber rifles on youtube. Best bet is to ask someone that hunts hogs and find out what they use. Myself, if it was a big hog, I would opt to use my Marlin 35 Remington. It makes a big hole!
 
I do hunt hogs, and with almost certainty, I'm sure a 243 would do the job. I do it with .223 almost exclusively now. The neck is a large target on a pig and that's about the best spot.

Another good spot is real low just behind the leg, but that one can be tricky.
 
I've shot LOTS of hogs with a .243! Oh wait that's just wishful thinking. I haven't shot ANY hogs with ANY gun as of yet.

I have however shot plenty of deer with a .243 in my youth hunting years and honestly when I moved up to a .308 when I turned 17 I wondered why I hadn't started with a .308 period. To me the recoil on a .308 isn't too much more than a .243 and it certainly isn't too much to handle. I'm not a big guy either - 5'10" and 180lbs.

That said I'd say a .243 is good for hogs so long as you put the bullet where it counts.
 
I've killed a couple of dozen deer with my .243, as well as a fair number of coyotes and prairie dogs. I'd have no qualms about doing in hogs with one.

Look around for good used reloading equipment to hold down the cost per shot, and the .243 is a good range toy as well as a superb hunting rig.

I like the 2X field of view with my 2x7 scope, and I've found that 7X is plenty of magnification for prairie dogs to 300 yards.

I've worked into some ten feet from hogs, down in the bottomland swamps along the Appalachicola River below Blountstown. I can tell you that the field of view of a Weaver K4 is nowhere near wide enough. :D
 
why not

Sure, plenty of rifle. Watch out for "varmint" bullets when you want "game" bullets. Some .243 rds are intended for fast, dramatic expansion and not really appropriate for bigger game. A varmint slug to the head or neck would likely work fine, but thats a pretty selective shot.

Bamaboy and myself have been using the .243 a bit on deer and I am much impressed with the round in general. We're shooting 100 gr Partitions. I would likely use the same on hogs myself, in case I got a shot a a really big one and could not spine or brain it.

Sure won't bounce off.
 
Parker, you can hunt with confidence in Florida with a .243. The first rifle I hunted with West of Melbourne was a .243. 250 yard shot on a 200 pound hog with standard Remington Core Lokts proved medicine enough for a clean kill with a round through the lungs.

When I bought my first rifle, I got a .308 because the deal was too good to pass up. I will tell you the recoil in a bolt action .308 with 150 grain bullets is noticably stiffer than .243 with 100 grain bullets.

When it was time to buy my oldest her first rifle, I went with a .243. She shot her first deer and hog with it, using Winchester Ballistic Silvertips. The deer was @ 85 yards and she pulled the shot and spined him right above the vitals. The deer dropped in his tracks. The pig was a 250 pound sow, shot at 30 yards behind the shoulder using the same bullet (type that is, no we didn't reload the used one :p). The sow stayed on her feet for 10 seconds and flopped over.

After getting her an AR in 6.8 SPC, which my oldest likes to shoot better, I find myself shooting her .243 because it is so fun to shoot! To me, there is little felt recoil.

Good luck with your purchase! There are plenty of good calibers, light in recoil, that will do the job. 7mm-08, as mentioned, is one. .257 Roberts, 6.8 SPC, 6.5 Grendel, .250 Savage, .308, .300 Savage, .260, are all short action rounds, lighter in recoil, who will all do a suitable job. Some are more easy to find than others, but with internet buying these days, you can find ammo for any online!
 
.243 works well for pigs. In 30 something years of hog hunting, with many hundreds of feral pigs culled, I remember only a few instances of unprovoked charges by boars. One such occasion was in the early 1980's where I witnessed a large boar charge a mate that he dropped at his feet with a single shot from his Sako 243.
 
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