243WIN performance on deer

[Why not?]

The 100g Winchester PowerPoint ammo works well. My friend's wife with her first bear.

View attachment 365805

One shot, and it was all over, right there.

Ted

 

[MD]

I had no problem killing deer with my 243 and a fair number of black bears too, but then I shot and lost a smallish bear with what I thought was a good boiler-room shot and switched to 30 calibre rifles though I have since used a 7x57 as well.

 

[NHunter]

Quote Originally Posted by NHunter View Post
Imagine what it the 'yote would look like after being smacked with a Winchester .243 Varmint X 58 grain whizzing along at 3850....!!

Half of the guys I hunt with use them and have found for the most part they are not as bad as one would think. Hit them long way through the guts and yep its a mess, keep them up front and I have seen coyotes shot from 50 to over 400 this year with this bullet and they have boarded pelts. I prefer a Nosler ballistic tip in 70 grn. We finished with 49 dogs between myself and a few neighbours and 15 came within sight of the house. 12 with mange.

Glad you have had good luck with them. Just picked up a box to try out!

 

[guy329]

I've never used them, but am working up a load for the Sierra .243 85 gr HPBT game king. I've read good things, but never any direct experience.

Has anyone here used them?

 

[Potashminer]

My experience with Sierra bullets in my 308 Win was that they were very accurate on targets - nice small groups. Had a bunch of Soft Point Boat Tail loaded for deer hunting - they were "hunting" bullets, but likely before they used the "GameKing" and "MatchKing" labels. Hit a whitetail on the spine - going away up-hill. Of course deer was dead as could be, but pieces of core and jacket were found all up alongside the spine - did not penetrate that bone at about 125 yards - appeared bullet had come apart - so, my experience of "one" instance. Decided that they were not the best for hitting bone, so shifted to Speer Soft Point and have stayed with that for hunting - for 40 years. However, I was recently convinced to take up longer range target and gong shooting, so have just taken delivery of some Sierra 168 Match King - so back to Sierra's after quite a number of years. Hoping that Sierra has maintained their "accuracy" - not too concerned what these will do after impact.

Had also worked up loads in my 338 Win Mag with 250 grain Sierra SPBT - easy to get small groups, but that "coming apart" on bone experience steered me to the 225 grain Accubond, which I use today.