Antelope bullet

[pacowboy]

Not sure your 9 twist can handle a 105 Berger but every time someone asks about a .243 it always takes me back to this video from John Burns. Pretty impressive. Number one thing in any harvest is shot placement.

 

[VLD Pilot]

Not sure your 9 twist can handle a 105 Berger but every time someone asks about a .243 it always takes me back to this video from John Burns. Pretty impressive. Number one thing in any harvest is shot placement.

If your out where John was when you use it, the answer is Yes. Elevation is the next best thing to a faster twist barrel. At 4000'+ elevation, a 9 twist will stabilize a 105 in any VLD bullet.

 

[VLD Pilot]

Not sure your 9 twist can handle a 105 Berger but every time someone asks about a .243 it always takes me back to this video from John Burns. Pretty impressive. Number one thing in any harvest is shot placement.

Your probably gonna find out in your home state that your stability is marginal to poor. Mine in Michigan with a 9 twist shooting the 105s is iffy. Over an inch group and keyholing at long ranges. Once I get up around 3800', it's good to go. I'm running 105s around 3100 so keeping them above 3000 should keep you very stable.

 

[KMLampson]

If the OP is looking to reduce meat damage, I would use 80 gr TTSX bullets. No problem stabilizing in my wife's 1-10" twist. They are highspeed killers!

 

[VLD Pilot]

Put any bullet thru any animals rib cage and you will have zero meat damage.

 

[jjmp]

Great 2 see the 243 sooooooooooooooooo loved,not to mention Other stellar Cartridges, last count i'm guilty of 3 lol ,cheers

 

[Junglebird]

Midway says my bullets won't ship till first week in May. Bummer! As suggestions come in I'm running them through applied ballistics. From what I see 90g seems to be the sweet spot for velocity, energy, and wind drift out to my 400 yard mark. Does anyone know the bullet length for the 100g Sierra game changer? I cant find it on their website, and it's not in the library for applied ballistics.

 

[jjmp]

call Sierra

 

[nicholasjohn]

My One and only Mule Deer / Antelope Hunt. Wyoming 1979. I had my new Weatherby Mark 5 in 270 Weatherby Mag. We were looking for Mule Deer when we were surprised by a small heard of antelope. I had 150 Grn Grand Slam Bullets in the rifle. The range was about 200 yards. Shot at the antelope and it ran??!! Shot again, and it ran , shot a third time and it kept running. So I quickly put two more rounds in the rifle and I shot at the ground in front to the antelope, and it turned, and when it did, Blood was running out of the three exit holes. I needed to shoot again, and finally kill it. The tough 150 grn .Grand Slam Bullet was not expanding at that range , at that velocity. From that day on, I have never used , Tough , Dense bullets on any soft skinned animal !! All my Whitetail deer since ,have been taken with 130 grn. bullets in both my .270 Win. or my 270 Weatherby Mag .A sad story to tell, but it was a real lesson for me.

I have shot a lot of antelope-sized whitetails with heavy bullets designed for much larger animals. Specifically, the 180-grain Swift A-Frame, and the 30-06 Ackley. MV was just shy of 3000 fps, and I never had a problem. Formerly, I had been shooting them with the 150-grain Federal Hi-Shok, in factory-loaded 308 cartridges. There were two major differences that I noted in the results : first, the bigger bullets made smaller holes - the exit wounds were all about the size of a nickel, and the Hi-Shoks made silver dollar-sized exits. Second, more of the deer fell down right away when shot with the heavier bullets. There was also far less blood-shot meat with the A-Frames. Why these smaller holes knocked deer down better is a mystery to me.

I think that the factor that made more of a difference than the bullet used was what the deer were doing when I shot them. The ones that were running like the devil mostly continued to run. They went anywhere from 50 to 100 yards before going down. The ones that were calmly walking or standing when shot all fell down right away. This was not a controlled study - it's an observation I have made over a period of a couple of decades, involving around fifty animals. During that time I also shot some deer ( all smallish does ) with the 22-250. I used heavy soft-point bullets ( 64 to 70 grains ) with heavy jackets designed for shooting deer. They all made small holes ( much like the A-Frames had done ) and the deer all fell down right away. The internal damage was much less than either 30 caliber bullet, but apparently it was enough. I think these results are inconclusive, because the sample size was small - only about ten animals. Also, none were running full-out when shot, but a few were loping along.

I think that when the animal is thoroughly scared and running hard, they are hard to knock down. Rapidly expanding bullets don't seem to change this. Neither do big holes, unless the holes are through the bones the animal is standing or running on. Rib cage shots often don't knock animals down, but they seldom get away when shot there. I think that if you want them to fall down, break a shoulder and watch what happens.