Welcome aboard. Glad to see you didn't start out with too controversial of a topic!

"Flat", "Far", & "Long Distance" are all relative terms. So, everyone who replies is going to have a different idea of what that means! Here's one way to look at the "range game": http://www.chuckhawks.com/rifle_trajectory_table.htm. [DISCLAIMER: I realize that I'm setting myself up for loads of folks to tell me that they've shot grizzlies at 600 yards with a .30-30. I'm just using Chuck's figures as a place to start.]

In short, if300 yards is your magic number, there are fairly few cartridges that will fit your bill.When you step it down to, say, 250 yards, there are tons more choices.If you look closely at the MPBR figures, you'll find that it generally takes a lot of powder (and recoil, and muzzle blast, and ammo expense...) to get to that 300 yard number, while keeping the trajectory within a 3 inch "pipe". However, there are some relatively mild cartridges that still top out at 275 to 295 yards.

I'd ask if you could give us some more information. Are whitetails the biggest animals you plan to hunt? Would you also like to shoot prairie dogs, ground hogs, foxes, coyotes, muskrats, etc.? Will there ever be caribou, moose, or elk on your menu?

Are you going to be a shooter, or a hunter? I've known lots of hunters who didn't shoot much at all. To them, recoil was a non-issue, since they didn't have to endure it for more than a handful of rounds each season! For those who like to blow a couple boxes of ammo per week, the cumulative effects of the recoil can add up.

What's been your shooting experience so far? Rimfires? Shotguns? Any centerfire shooting experience? If so, which cartridges? In which rifles? If you tell us a bit about your background, we can use that as a baseline for comparisons of other cartridges we might suggest.

The bottom line is that the .243 and especially the .270, will shoot plenty flat enough, and hard enough,for TX whitetails. And when you get 3,000 replies to your post, each suggesting yet another cartridge, most of those will be entirely adequate, too! Deer just aren't that tough, and most cartridges will be able to get the job done on them. The questions come when you start discussing the range of animals you're going after, and whether they'll be in the mountains, swamps, forests, or fields.

Take Care,

FC