which caliber would be better for deer hunting for a youth of 11 . which one would be a good starter for agirl like recoil

You should be able to find a lighter weight rifle in the 243 Win easier than the 25-06 because of the shorter bullet lenghth . Personally I don' t find the recoil to be that bad in either one of them , I own both calibers . When my grandsons started to hunt I bought them 243 wins for thier first guns and liked the caliber so well I have three of them myself .

I think the .234 is a good choice for any hunter to start off with,the 25-06 might " bite" more and make the new hunter flinch and start off with bad habbits...[]

LIGHT .243 with a bipod to use for a rest, should do the trick.

25-06 has quite a bit more kick and in a light rifle would be worse.

My son learned how to shoot a rifle at a young age with a scoped 22 then went up to a 243 and at age 10 he killed his first deer with that gun. He' s now 13 and can shoot my 30.06 and 25.06 really well for his age. I would have to agree that the 243 is a good gun to start a youngster off with and it' s recoil is light as they learn how to shoot. The 25.06 does have more recoil than the 243 and like already mentioned may cause some bad habits to develope. I' m not saying she couldn' t handle the 25.06 now but from my experience with my kid the 243 would be better for her.

You know if your a handloader, hodgson puts out some cool downloaded loads for young people. While at the range I was really impressed at some of them. The accuracy was good and recoil was nice. I think more than anything is the rifle fitting the individual. You can get a .243 that doesn' t fit the child and causes him problems.

I started out with a 243win and it didn' t fit me at all. Thinking back, that was my biggest obsacle.

243 thats what i started with

Hands down the 25-06 rem. 115grn bullet in the rem or win or ruger rifles and federal ammo. I' m not a bigg fan of the 243win for deer. It works for them but I' m just a fan of the 25-06.I don' t think the recoil is that far apart.BBJ

I also vote for the 25-06.

Either would be fine, i dont think its that much diference in recoil.

Actually I would skip both and look long and hard at a 260 Rem. If you are stuck on one of the two though I would go with the 243 Win. I just don' t see any advantage to the 25-06. If you are going to shoot a 25-06 you would be much better served with a 270 Win.