trends
Without a doubt, the popularity of the AR, and the various cartridges that can fit through the AR15 based rifles, are driving that segment of the issue. Folks have acquired an AR.....now what do you do with it?
The .243 has been around long enough now, and is mostly understood by the hunting community regards the need for appropriate slugs, that it has a following much broader than its original users, which I agree, was mostly those considered recoil sensitive.
People may not be smarter, but there may be some truth in the idea that hunters, are to some extent, more knowledgeable than they were 50 yrs ago. I listened to my elders in the 1960-70's condemn the .243 as a deer cartridge, and extol the '06 with heavy bullets as a tremendous killer. Many of these fellows had hunted only their home state with very controlled harvest limits. They could hunt a lifetime and kill perhaps two dozen deer, with the same rifle/cartridge their Dad used, ie, not a very broad experience base. I repeated the mantra............it was all I knew.
But I moved and began to hunt states where harvest limits were more lenient, bowhunted and hunted with muzzleloaders, and began to realize that the old timers were both right and wrong. They just didn't know it. Yes, a .30/180RN RN is indeed grim death on a 150 lb whitetail, but so was a broadhead, a roundball, and a measly 100 gr .243, all when applied correctly.
Surely, if I could figure that out, so could a lot of other folks.