The humble .243 Win

>>33358725
Get the .308 use it for everything

/thread

>>33358725
.243 is great for up to black tail desu

>>33358725
.243 is great, absolutely the best for durr with the proper grain bullet.

>>33358725
Like anything fast and light you just need to pick your shots to guarantee a vitals hit. Some people like heavier deeper penetrating cartriges so they can mash through a shoulder with less worry of deflection or the bullet stopping before it gets to something important or take a quartering shot where they need to get through a lot of animal first.

If you dont mind passing up shots that dont get you clear into the boiler room 243 is fine.

>>33358725
.243 is pretty much the ideal deer round if your local laws don't have a retarded caliber restriction desu.
i've used it for coyote too, but it can wreck a pelt with the wrong loading

>>33358740

It's an option for sure. But I can shoot 3000fps varmint rounds with less powder and cheap bullets. Also, recoil from a .308 in a 6.5-7lbs rifle means no one else in my family would shoot the rifle until my son grows up.

>>33358725
.243 is really spicy shit, and you already have a .308.

Get the .243, no contest.

>>33359010

Do you stick with polymer tips for coyotes or just FMJ? Also, what do you do with the pelts. We always just culled coyotes to keep them off the calves and goats, but I'd love not to waste the animal.

>>33358725
.308 everything

God damn would that ever simplify logistics.

Need bigger than a .308, get a 20mm.

Heavy .243 bonded soft points will fuck anything in the lower 48 except brown bears out to 500 yards easily.

It's criminally underrated because FUDDs need powah instead of accuracy. Just like 6.5 Swede is underrated here in the US while Euros rekt big dangerous game with it.

tl;dr .243 is based as fuck.

>>33359049
i've done both. i used to load fmj rounds before my lgs starting stocking hornady v-max rounds, those are my bottom bitch now.
you can usually sell them to a furbuyer for a decent chunk of change. they've gone for $40-100 a pelt around my area, so it's a good way to have your gun pay for itself

>>33359064
> bonded

Is it reasonable to expect close to the same POI between a normal spire ppint and a bonded spire point if the bullet weights and powder charges are the same? It will be a lot easier on my wallet to work up a load with boring Hornady SPs.

If not, any experience with 95gr SSTs or Nosler Ballistic tips?

>>33359097
I've never seen a drop in accuracy, but every bullet is different. Plus 6mm pills are cheap.

I normally use plain Jane Core-Lokts which wrecks deer and hawgs. I only used bonded for black bear which removed Yogi with ease.

I mostly use .223 these days because M193 drops hogs and coyotes easy, and bonded .223SP wrecks deer and blackie bears too.

.308 sucks DESU.

If the US wasn't muh .30 caliber, we could have 6mmNATO or 7mmNATO on FALs and G3s.

>>33358725
>carbine in .243

.243 is kind of an oddball cartridge for most of my uses, hence I've sort of avoided using it over the years as anything small and fluffy gets whacked with .223 and anything bigger gets the .308
Not that I think its a bad round, its pretty accurate and the 90-105gr will deck the shit out of most things- however! Those heavier grain rounds do like a more severe twist to get spin on the bullet and on a carbine it is a bit of a factor and something you should look at that its got a 1-10" twist to use those. For lighter rounds the 1-12" twist is fine and if you're thinking of using it as a long range rifle for smaller game, that would be ideal for throwing the 65-75gr through

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243 is one of the most commonly used cartridges for deer hunting. the small diameter increase between .24 and .25 doesn't mean that much, what really matters is bullet construction, placement, and impact velocity. 85gr barnes at 2600fps impact dont perform the same as 100gr corelokts at 2200fps impact, etc. it's best to look around forums for multiple user experiences to compare and contrast all possible simulations of reality

>shot this at 400 yards with 95gr partition
>figure typical starting v0 for that weight, find bullet bc, calculate impact speed
>note shot placement, amount of bloodshot/lead damaged meat, retained weight, etc
>repeat for every bullet ever made and decide which is a big guy for you

>>33358725
> advocating nothing smaller than a 6.5 or .270 for whitetail

I hate to sound like Elmer Keith, but they have a point. .243 just doesn't have the mass to make it though a shoulder bone, so you'll always run a risk of not making it out the other side. Even the 120gr 6.5 bullets are marginal, but they get a helping hand because they are stupid long and have ridiculous SD.

Honestly, .270 isn't that bad out of a lighter rifle. Man up and put the animal's welfare ahead of some recoil. Your shoulder can take it.

>>33359380

I can understand your point about the game suffering, but there is no damn way my wife or kids are going to enjoy shooting a .270 out of a 7lbs rifle, assuming I could find one. Part of the reason I was looking at the .243 is to have a bridge between my AR and a .308.

>>33358725
I've always stood by my .25-06 for deer.
.25-06 is great, super straight shooting i inherited a rifle in .25-06 and a huge crate of unknown handloads, I've yet to run out but I've gotten three deer since I've owned the rifle

>>33359420
See if you can find a 7mm-08, 6.5 Creedmore, or 6.5x55 if they even sell them in burger land. For what you're wanting, .243 sits in a weird no-mans land between canines and deer.

>>33359380
>243 just doesn't have the mass to make it though a shoulder bone

This just simply isn't true.

>>33359567
On the front side, sure. On the back side, not likely. I've personally seen a mule deer shot where the .243 bullet did not make it through the far shoulder.

>>33358725
.270 and laugh at the plebs

>>33358725
>lightweight .308 carbine
What gun? Take my money.

>>33358725
6mm is much better than 308. Paper ballistics for 308 are exaggerated. The chronograph doesn't lie, and it clearly says that the 308 is far too slow.

Don't listen to any of that bullshit about how 6mm isn't big enough. It will kill anything up to and including deer. Even elk are not wholly out of the question.

>>33359380
Penetration is determined by sectional density, which is mass divided by cross sectional area, not raw mass.

>>33360629
Lot's of alpine rifles out there. 20" barrel, 6-7lbs total weight. Howa has a very nice one, in fact.

>>33360795
For tissue, sure. But 165gr .308 doesn't have much more SD than a 95gr .243. But people routinely punch through hog shoulders and both deer shoulders with .308s.

TL;DR: Bone has too much cohesion to use a simple Newton's approximation for impact depth.

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Anectdotal but, when I was growing up all of my friends had .243 for deer. My Dad thought it was a tad light and got me a 6.5x55 instead.

Over 20+ years of hunting with the same group of guys, and seeing them get first rifles for their kids over the last 5, I've seen a shift away from the .243 toward 6.5x55 or 260 Remington.

It's not a bad round but, it's a little bit of a tweener and doesn't quite have enough to finish things if the shot placement isn't perfect, or a shoulder bone is hit square.

Have you considered the 260 Remington? Light kick, accurate, better upper-end performance envelope than the 6mm.

>>33360795
only with bullets of same design
a lightweight barnes TSX at will rip through both shoulders of a bull moose just as well as a high SD corelokt or something

>>33361214
Ocean Pacific here. I'd love a 6.5 or especially a 7mm gun, but they are practically nonexistent in a left hand carbine, and my right eye vision isn't going to get better. I'm keeping my good eye out for one though.

>>33361207
>But 165gr .308 doesn't have much more SD than a 95gr .243
Yes it does, but if you are shooting 165 grain bullets, you need a 30-06. 308 is very slow with heavy bullets, much slower than published figures. The chronograph does not lie.

.243 is good for deer (shit, .223 is enough for deer) but you have to not be an asshole doing a Texas Heart Shot with el cheapo ammunition. Be a damn marksman.

>>33358725
.243 because what's the point of .308 when you are going to shoot light weight?

>>33365138

> Have to google Texas heart shot
> "Bullet fired through the anus of an animal"

Rural people perplex me sometimes.

>>33359380
With modern hunting ammunition you are objectively wrong. 100g at screaming hot velocities is enough for any whitetail. I would agree if we were talking about elk.

>>33365138
.223 CAN be a somewhat adequate deer round with proper bullet constriction and shot placement it will perform admirably. However as a general hunting cartridge for medium sized game it is woefully anemic.
>sitting on the edge of a bean field watching and waiting
>good
>jump shooting a deer during a drive
>bad