I played with a .243 for a couple of years. Pretty good pronghorn and deer caliber as long as the deer aren't too big. The big mulies I hunted a lot back then were, in my opinion, a little on the big side for the caliber. I used it when I was stationed in CA and it was good for blacktails and I took it to HI where I used it on feral goats and mouflon sheep. It worked on game that size but was a little destructive to meat if a major bone was hit. I admit I never tried it with any sort of premium bullet since it grouped rem factory rounds well. Good coyote round too.

I finally sold it when I got a rem Model 700 Classic in 6.5x55 Swedish. I became a huge fan of the 6.5 caliber. It is only .5 mm bigger than the .245 (6mm) but you can get bullets up to 160 gr. I've never recovered a 6.5mm bullet from anything. It just keeps going and doesn't seem to tear up much meat.