I have a Ruger#1 in .243Win and started reloading last March(rookie reloader) for it as factory loads were performing dismally at best.I dusted quite a few groundhogs this last year and am very pleased with the performance of this caliber.Now I`m quite obsessed with shooting and reloading.Digging thru some old Guns + Ammo books I saw an article on reloading the .243 Win. It says Warren Page more or less was the founder of this caliber.I`d like to know more about him and figured this is a great place to start.Nice forum guys!
Scioto River Rat

Scioto River Rat: Your library might have old archived copies of Field and Stream. Page was shooting editor from 1947 till 1971. He wrote some books- "The Accurate Rifle" being one which I have- which is a very good read. Page was an excellent gun writer-- the like we don't see today.

Page had a cartridge he called the "Page Super Pooper". I think it was created by him and or Fred Huntington. I think it was a 7mm Mauser necked down.

When the .243 Wincester came out with that really short neck most writers knocked it for that feature making up stuff on why it was going to be no good. But Wincester choose a 1-10 twist and loaded the 100 gr bullet and Remington choose a 1-12 twist and a 90 gr bullet.

Hunters viewed the 100 gr bullet a deer bullet and the 90 as a lesser load and the .244 Remington died out right from the start.

I got a new .243 in the summer of 1957. As you may suspect it was accurate right from the start. I used Sierra 75 gr and 85 gr bullets and IMR 4350.

Warren Page seems to have gotten lost in the upsurge of popularity of Jack O'Connor. He certainly made no effort to publish like O'Connor did. Or Keith for that matter. Page was certainly the most literate and educated of our gunwriters.

THE ACCURATE RIFLE seems to be often mentioned but his collection of hunting stories from FIELD & STREAM published as ONE MAN'S WILDERNESS in 1973 ought to suffice to stack him high in the upper tier of the best of American outdoor writers. He certainly was a better marksman than most and never deliberately dumbed down his material to sound like a good ole boy, though he wrote with a clear idea of the reading level of his audience.

If I remember correctly the PSP was a .240 and Page was often credited with the introduction of the 243 Win/244 Rem. The calibre most often thought of with his name, however, was his old 7mm Mashburn Magnum in the days well before the 7mm RemMag.

Page's ONE MAN'S WILDERNESS is a worthwhile book to find and read to sample the best of his hunting writing.

Thanks for the replies.I will have to search out some of his books/articles.Hopefully our local library will have some of his works.Thanks again to all.Right now I`m using 70gr Ballistic tips/43.5 gr H414/Win primer.It is a mild,accurate load in this rifle.
Scioto River Rat

I do remember reading Field & Stream in the years when Page was its shooting editor. I also remember that he wrote about developing the .240 Page Super Pooper. My memory is that he started with a regular .243 Winchester, but "improved" it by making the shoulder angle considerably sharper to get the .240 PSP. In other words, the .240 PSP was an improved .243 Winchester. Whether or not Page had a hand in developing the original .243 Winchester I don't know.

Page was also a Harvard graduate, for what that's worth.

There's some confusion here, I think, between the .243 and the .244/6mm Remington. The .243 is was made by necking down the .308 Winchester case to 6 mm.

The .244/6mm Remington was made by necking down the 7 x 57 case to 6 mm. (The .257 Roberts was also made by necking down the 7 X 57 case to .25 caliber.)

So the two calibers -- .243 and .244/6mm Remington -- although they are both 6mm in caliber, have a different origin. The 7 x 57 case is, in fact, somewhat longer than the .308 Winchester case, and their various offspring also have that difference in case length.

I don't know whether Warren Page was involved in the creation of either the .243 or the .244/6mm Remington. He did make the .240 Page Super Pooper by giving the .243 a sharper shoulder.

Warren Page was one of my favorites and he wore a great friendly GRIN in many of his hunting photographs...

I remember the title of one of his FIELD & STREAM "shooting" articles...The article was about handloads for varmint hunting and was entitled " Pet Loads for Pasture Poodles"..... .....

[This message has been edited by Pygmy (edited 01-18-2002).]

The best I can remember from reading old books, Page either found or was given some of the "T-65" cases. That was the military designation for its experimental case that eventually became known as the 7.62 Nato, or .308 Win. Anyway, Page necked down the 30 cal case to .243. He tried to talk Winchester into making the .243 round, but they instead introduced the .308 Winchester, even before the military adopted it as the standard Nato round. They eventually got back to Page's idea, and introduced the .243 Win.

The Page Souper Pooper was named that in jest, poking fun at the .25 Souper, also based on the .243 or .308 cases

This is all subject to correction, as it came from memory.

Page was almost wholy responsible for both the .243 and th .244/6mm. Rem., or at least the part of actually getting them to fruition.

He liked flat shooters, and liked varminting and early benchrest shooting, and helped a lot in popularizing benchrest, too.

It was his quest for a better varmint round that prompted his initial efforts that resulted in the .243 and 6mm. Page wanted a speedy round that was bigger than the .22's so it would be less wind sensitive, and smaller than the .25's so he could shoot lighter bullets and still have good sectional density and attentant ballistic coefficients.
Looking around, he found the 6mm. Lee Navy and some other 6mm. rounds, and this was the initial promoting here of the 6mm. bore diameter.

As noted above, after getting the experimental cases for the 7.62/.308, he worked with it and that became the .243. He also toyed with the 7x57 Mauser case, and that became the .244/6mm.

He also helped get the .280 Rem. and 7mm. Rem. Mag. started,

Let me add myself to those who lament Page's passing. There simply isn't anyone like him around now, and I suspect never will be.

I'm not to sure that hunters were down on the .244s 1 in 12" twist and 90 grain bullets, but the gun writers were. There was a lot of ink wasted on the fact that the .244 wouldn't stabilize 100 grain bullets, without any testing being done. Some .244s were quite capable of good accuracy with 100 grain bullets, Speer's 105 round nose, and Nosler's 95 grain partition were certainly good answers to the problem. I never had a problem with the 90 grain corelockts, handloading them in the .243. The original 100 grain power point had a good bit of trouble opening up fast enough for deer, it was tough enough for elk. I think the whole 100 grain minimum idea stemmed from Ned Robert's idea that a .25 caliber 100 grain bullet would be just great on deer. Given the same shape a 90 grain .243 bullet is ballistically the equivalent of a 100 grain .257 bullet, but nobody ever published that fact.

Page wrote a lot for Gun Digest; very good stuff. I just re-read one of his stories about 'knock down' power (he never saw it happen in anything over 10#). He actually shot an elephant in the head with a .460 Wby., intentionally missing the brain, just to see what would happen! It knocked the beast out for about 10 sec. When it woke up and got back on its feet Page killed it.
Seems to me there was another story about taking a bunch of 6mm's to New Zealand and trying them out on elk. At the time there was no limit or season. He was quite an experimenter. He also won several national bench rest titles as I recall. So who do we have now to replace these guys?
C.G.B.

I will say that "ballistically equivalent" and equivalent are not the same in reality as in this case the 257 bullet has 10 percent more mass and a larger diameter. As far as most deer hunting goes the difference may be small but it is there.

This is out of the Speer #4 Wildcat reloading manual.
The original 240Page was the predecessor of the 243Win. It was made from T-65(7.62 or 308) necked to 6mm.,30-degree shoulder,and a full 5/16 neck length.
The 240PSP is similar to the 244Improved in dimensions and Speer says factory 244 ammunition could be fired in it.
The Speer manual goes on to discribe Page's original 240PSP. A BSA medium-length action, a 22in. Apex barrel, stocked by Lenard Brownell for a gross weight of 7lbs., 2oz. This is the rifle he took to New Zealand.
His load was the 105gr. Speer(what else) at a velocity of 3150fps. It also mentions 14 1 shot kills on Euro. red deer.
Maybe this dates me but I grew up with Warren Page, Pete Brown, and J.O'C. I have many fond memories of their writtings from the 50's and 60's.