Jim Taylor
For many years my wife's rifle
Wednesday, December 04, 2019, 07:00

was a Model 600 Remington in .243 Winchester. We called it the "meat gun" since it was fairly easy to bring home the meat with it.

The only bullet I loaded for hunting was the 95 gr. Nosler Partition bullet. I had seen the factory bullets blow up on leg bones .. usually because the shooter was using too light a bullet ... and I wanted something that would penetrate the bigger Mule deer we had in the mountains around Oracle, Arizona.

My loads ran 3100 fps from the Remington and I had sighted it about 1/4" high at 25 yards. This gave a maximum point blank range of nearly 300 yards. The mid-range trajectory was around 2 1/2". This is flat enough shooting that you could hold "on" the deer at normal ranges and not worry.

The rifle and load took a truckload of deer and javelina over 10 or 12 years and I do not recall ever having to shoot one twice. Recoil was mild enough that my 12 year old daughter could shoot it quite well.

We never had a bullet failure with the Nosler Partitions. I know the .243 has been cussed and discussed to death, but from what little experience I have with the caliber, I believe most of the problems have been driving a bullet that could not hold together much too fast.

Now that I am older I regret not having that gun. My old shoulders just don't like recoil anymore and for the game I shoot these days the .243 would work just fine.