Recommendations for a .243 deer hunting bullet

hunterjoe21

I have some other bullets I want to play around with, just ‘cause...

80 gr Barnes TTSX
85 gr Barnes TSX
90 gr Nosler Accubond
95 gr Nosler Partition

I’m thinking about ordering a few boxes of the Cavity Back MKZ’s

slimjim

The Barnes TTSX shot well in my 243 but I could not get the TSX or Nosler E-Tip to group no matter what I did. The SGK did no seem to expand that well or leave a large wound cavity. I lost a couple deer with it.

From my experience with other calibers, the Nosler Accubond will retain its core with a nice mushroom but not have as much weight to penetrate as the TTSX even though it starts out 10 grains heavier. The Partition will shed its front core and frag while the jacket and rear core should penetrate as a single piece.

hunterjoe21

Elvis wrote:

yip thats sort of group Id expect from an EBRG.... what ever your load is DONT MESS WITH IT.

I might need to mess with it some.

I started cleaning brass the other night and realized that the case necks were failing. This was Winchester plated brass that started out as factory loads. It made it through 4 reloads before giving up. I checked the remaining pieces I had in my brass drawer and decided to scrap all 120 pcs.

I have plenty of .243 brass, some Winchester. Should I back off my powder charges slightly and work back up? I’ve never seen any signs of high pressure with the current load.

Vince

HJ, when you say the necks are “failing”, what do you actually mean mate? Are the necks splitting from work hardening when crimping...or are the cracks similar to those in the pic below?

If they are like the ones below, it is my experience that the actual brass is at fault. All of the cracks are in one brand of Aussie brass (no longer available thank goodness) called Super. The cartridge in the bottom right is a 30.30 (Remington R-P brass) that cracked (blew out) on the shoulder, but I think that was my fault due to not having the sizing die set correctly. I believe that nickel plated brass can tend to be a little harder than straight brass and will work harden and crack/split before straight brass cases.

Bottom line...annealing can help avoid a lot of case failures due to neck splitting, and will extend case life by enough to make the effort worthwhile.

slimjim

I've had my .243 cases split like this also. I don't think they were reloaded that many time (3 or 4?) but the brass was very old (30 years?). The ones I had cracks in I toss. The ones without cracks get closely inspected. I think Vince's suggestion to anneal them is a good option. In fact, if you can still get some of the 120 you threw away, I recover a few without cracks, anneal them, and see how they do for a couple of reloads.

Dawgdad

Brass is a consumable expense of reloading. It does not last forever. work hardening will cause the splits and annealing can give you extra life from brass but eventually primer pockets get loose necks split or if you are over sizing you will get case separations. Brass is like a girlfriend, not a wife. get rid of it when it starts acting crazy.

English Mike

I bought a motorised annealer earlier this year but have yet to try it out as what brass i currently have has only had one load through it.
I'm thinking to anneal every third load.
Using RCBS X dies too so there should be a little less work hardening.

Vince

Good thinking English Mike. I anneal every three loads as well and as I don’t use maximum loads I expect at least 3 to 5 more loads from the brass than would be usual. Of course the problems mentioned by DD will be the overall governing factors.

hunterjoe21

Mine are splitting

hunterjoe21

There aren't that many that have split, but since this stuff was purchased as factory ammo long before I started reloading, it doesn't owe me anything. I don't anneal anything, so I'll just leave it in the scrap bucket for now. I have at least 300 more pieces of .243, and it isn't really expensive if I need more

hunterjoe21

slimjim wrote:

The Barnes TTSX shot well in my 243 but I could not get the TSX or Nosler E-Tip to group no matter what I did. The SGK did no seem to expand that well or leave a large wound cavity. I lost a couple deer with it.

From my experience with other calibers, the Nosler Accubond will retain its core with a nice mushroom but not have as much weight to penetrate as the TTSX even though it starts out 10 grains heavier. The Partition will shed its front core and frag while the jacket and rear core should penetrate as a single piece.

Slim,

I looked at my Nosler book. They have a note regarding the E-tip that in certain situations it will require a 1/9 twist

Elvis

are my eyes bung or are they nickle cases??? did a hundred of them for a mate in dirty06 years back and Mate werethose suckers HARD.......really had to lean on press handle.

hunterjoe21

Elvis wrote:

are my eyes bung or are they nickle cases??? did a hundred of them for a mate in dirty06 years back and Mate werethose suckers HARD.......really had to lean on press handle.

They are plated, but I don’t recall them requiring any extra effort to size them.

When I first started loading, I full length sized everything, including these. At some point, I started setting my die to just bump the shoulder back by .003” on these. That’s when the real accuracy potential of this load showed up.

It seems to be a fairly mild load at 38.2 grains of Varget I still haven’t pulled the data from the Labradar (and didn’t write it down), but I think they are somewhere in the 3050-3100 fps range.

Vince

Two are split and the middle one is more a “blowout cut” similar to what I have experienced with the brass in my pic above. I’m just about prepared to bet that the split necks are because of the nickel cases being marginally harder that straight brass. Like Elvis, I too have found nickel plated cases harder to resize, and also more prone to neck splits, than straight brass. The middle case may well have had a small imperfection that wasn’t obvious, resulting in the “blowout”.

hunterjoe21

Dawgdad wrote:

Brass is like a girlfriend, not a wife. get rid of it when it starts acting crazy.

That’s a great quote. You should add that to your Sig line...