I just bought a 1957 99f in 243, It's such a sweet rifle I plan to use it as a cull rifle for does at under 150 yds. I will use imr4350 at about 2,800 fps. I know this is stupid because I hate tracking deer & have 3 excellent 257's but it'll keep me out of the bars this summer.

We do the same thing in the summer and if the deer is able to run even 50 yards they can get into the large weeds and under brush making them impossible to find. I used 85grain game kings and put it thru the shoulder blade with a broadside shot and if lucky enough to get a shot with the deer angled toward me I would put through the shoulder bone for an instant kill. Many deer died so quick they still had soybeans in their mouth. Sometimes they would stumble a couple of feet but never got far. The quickest kill was a high shoulder hit but that was nearly missing them. At 200 yards the 243 is lacking the energy to put them down quickly enough and I decided to send my gun off for a 257 Roberts barrel.

Tom: for the ranges you are talking about, I'd look pretty hard at the 100gr Hornady Round Nose.

Any of them will do. I have had great results with the 100gr Hornady RN, 105gr speer sp (my pick) and the 100gr sierra btsp.

We shoot a lot of does but allways in the winter when the fawns are no longer dependant. How do you avoid orphaning fawns?

IMO, the difference in cost between Nosler Partitions and any "non-premium" bullet shouldn't be an issue when you're hunting game. How many deer are you going to cull during the course of a year, 50 or 100? If so, what small fraction of the cost of your shooting would be made up by the difference in cost between 1 box of Hornady's and 2 boxes of Nosler Partitions?

I cull deer with a variety of rifles/cartridges, from the 22 Magnum to the 308. When I use a smaller bore CF cartridge, I usually use Partitions, since I am confident that they will penetrate into the pleural cavity from any reasonable angle. I've personally had 4 bad experiences with the 85 grain Sierra BTHP, so wouldn't recommend that .243" bullet if recovering your game is important. When they work, 98% of the time, they work great. When they don't work, 2% of the time, they disintegrate on the surface and don't cause an immediate deadly wound.

My recommendation for a .243" bullet to shoot deer, under any conditions, is the 95 grain Partition. I think that it offers a nice balance of potential velocity, accuracy, and penetration. That said, I have shot more deer with the 80 grain Federal factory loads than all other 243 and 6mm bullets combined. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 200+/- whitetails.

Jeff

We are in the middle of a drought down here & a late frost took out most of the acorn crop for this fall. I hunt at the invintation of the owner on a 4,800 acre farm which has about 800 acres under irrigation. In june/ july all our deer are going to have to eat is in the irrigated field. The deer will be in the field in groups of 20 or more, so I can wait on a broadside shot. I would expect the average doe will weigh about 100 pounds live. All the meat will be given to the mexicans & blacks who live around the farm & will be happy to have extra food. If hogs move in I'll move up to a 270 or '06. I had not thought about creating orphens so I'll try to pick out dry does.

The 100gr Sierra spire point boat tail is great. Easy load with 39 to 40 grains of IMR-4350 and you're in business.

The load that has worked in our .243 is 41 grains of IMR-4350 and a Sierra 100 grain bullet, either the flat base or boat tail seems to shoot the same in this rifle. In this ultra light rifle the groups have been as small as .35" and always under an inch. We have had complete pass throughs with this bullet with lots of internal damage and nearly always dropped on the spot. One Whitetail buck shot straight on in the chest at 125 yards ran 80' or so and was dead when we got to him, the bullet had passed through the entire length of the body and lodged under the hide on the back ham and weighed 87 grains when recovered.
I would recommend this bullet time and time again for deer sized animals in my eyes it has proven itself.

Any of the standard 100 grainers from the major manufacturers are decent bullets....

If you want the most "cost effective".. I'd have to give that to the Rem 100 grain Corelokt..if buying in bulk it is the cheapest, and it gives very good on game performance..

I was very partial to the 100 Grain Sierra SMP... but as usual.. anything I like, the manufacturers hear I am using it, so they stop making it....

So I don't recommend ANYTHING, and then the manufacturers won't say " Oh Seafire is using this.. time to cease production!"..

We hunt (if you can call it that) in last few hours of daylight. We see mostly does and watch them for a while to see if there are any fawns and judge how big the deer is. The yearling does won't have any fawns and are the best to eat anyway. We do this later in the summer when the fawns big enough to eat soybeans and I haven't seen any starving ones running around. I have seen many eating soybeans right along with their mother.

Thanks for the info. We start on does in November/ They will give birth in May/June. The fawns are definately able to live physicaly then but the juries out about any earlier.

Fawns start to supplement milk from an early age - I don't think it necessarily means they can solely live on adult food.

Seafire, haha, so true, how many guns are no longer mfg that were built as we would want them to be made....I relate well

1894mk2
We would rather do the culling in the cold weather months but are regulated by the state. However, I don't think we would be so succesful in the winter time. We can shoot one and 20 minutes later have another come out from the same spot and look at the dead one. We sometimes have two dead deer less than ten yards apart.

I've used the old Nosler Solid Base (the one with the lead, not polymer tip) exclusively for a deer bullet in my .243 for many years. It has been excellent, and Nosler is now making it again. Check their website and sometimes you can catch them at very attractive prices direcly from Nosler or from Shooter's Pro Shop.

I like the Sierra 100 grain SP also, but slightly prefer the Nosler SB.

I like the Hornady 100gr SP. Always wored for me. I shoot a 243 AI.

Seafire I feel the same way about the manufacturers.

My Whelen shot the the 225Nosler BT'S great and they hammered deer. Guess what? They don't make them any more.

I don't know why but for some reason I purchased 400 of of them at one time. I've still got plenty left and will probably never run out as long as I'm still a resident of planet earth.

Bill

I use hornady interlocks exclusively but I might shoot at anything from a ground squirrel to a deer at possible long ranges.

My wife and I have shot a lot of deer with a 243.
She has shot some big bodied mule deer and some antelope as well.
At the lease in Texas we used 40gr of IMR4350 with either a 95 gr Nosler Partition or a 100gr Sierra SPZ.

She used 42 gr of IMR 4350, with the 100gr Sierra's on the antelope and the same powder charge with the 95gr Nosler Partitons on the big mule deer.

These loads killed game like lightening.

Why not use this cull as an oppertunity to test different 243 bullets and report the results here?

quote:

Originally posted by Stonecreek:
I've used the old Nosler Solid Base (the one with the lead, not polymer tip) exclusively for a deer bullet in my .243 for many years. It has been excellent, and Nosler is now making it again. Check their website and sometimes you can catch them at very attractive prices direcly from Nosler or from Shooter's Pro Shop.

I like the Sierra 100 grain SP also, but slightly prefer the Nosler SB.

Shooter's Pro Shop currently has the 100 gr solid base bullets for just $6.95 for the bag of seconds. They work great, and won't be available much longer as they are no longer producing them.
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here is another vote for Hornady 100 gr SP interlock. Mine come out at 3150, and they do the job. Ron