Odders
Well-Known Member
Current & updated version of the Leupold FX2 6x42 I have on the .243: https://www.leupold.com/scopes/rifle-scopes/fx-3-6x42mm
£480 here or £310 in the US if you know where to look.
1st Deer Calibre Rifle - Advice
- Thread starter blaserf3
- Start date
Current & updated version of the Leupold FX2 6x42 I have on the .243: https://www.leupold.com/scopes/rifle-scopes/fx-3-6x42mm
£480 here or £310 in the US if you know where to look.
Woodsy
Well-Known Member
+1
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WJUoncBd720
My first rifle was a Howa 1500 in .243 which, admittedly, never let me down. Occasionally bullets wouldn’t make it all the way through fallow bucks, which could have made tracking hard if they had run in to cover. Occasionally meat damage on roe was excessive.
7mm08 140gr bullets; so far no such issues. Barely any difference in recoil with a moderator and the rifle loves PPU at £15 a box; cheaper than the factory ammo I was buying for the .243. Good luck with your choice, and as others have said, all will do the job, some better than others perhaps depending on your needs, and your first rifle most probably won’t be your last anyway.
Penyard
Well-Known Member
7-08 is perfect if it were not for potential ammo supply issues. I have one but it has never fired a factory round and I get great results hand loading for it which I suspect the OP is not wanting to do?
With big deer on the menu I would say .308 every time. Took a pal out a few weeks ago and he shot a trophy wild boar with my 18” barreled .308 loaded with 165gr Accubond doing a very steady 2,600fps. Bullet exited after a well placed heart/lung shot that had to punch through shoulder shield hide an inch thick both sides, the animal was circa 200kg and ran 30 yards. Try doing that with a .243! Or for that matter, please don’t as it will end very differently. Nowt wrong with .243 but horses for courses and big deer best tackled with big bullets in my opinion.
my recent experience with .308 and that large boar has reminded me just how capable the .308 is without needing to be a magnum with heavy recoil etc. as other posters have said, recoil is partially about rifle fit and I would be surprised if a nice fitting middle weight .308 with a moderator didn’t turn out to be comfortable for the OP to shoot. If a ready supply of 7-08 ammo is available locally then look at that too.
With big deer on the menu I would say .308 every time. Took a pal out a few weeks ago and he shot a trophy wild boar with my 18” barreled .308 loaded with 165gr Accubond doing a very steady 2,600fps. Bullet exited after a well placed heart/lung shot that had to punch through shoulder shield hide an inch thick both sides, the animal was circa 200kg and ran 30 yards. Try doing that with a .243! Or for that matter, please don’t as it will end very differently. Nowt wrong with .243 but horses for courses and big deer best tackled with big bullets in my opinion.
my recent experience with .308 and that large boar has reminded me just how capable the .308 is without needing to be a magnum with heavy recoil etc. as other posters have said, recoil is partially about rifle fit and I would be surprised if a nice fitting middle weight .308 with a moderator didn’t turn out to be comfortable for the OP to shoot. If a ready supply of 7-08 ammo is available locally then look at that too.
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Tom D
Well-Known Member
The 7-08 is great, no doubt, and on paper it does fit the bill perfectly. In terms of ammo, any good gun shop will order in anything you want so availability isn’t really an issue either. It’s the cost that might stick in the throat. With some ammo coming in at £60 a box £3 a shot will just lead to you shooting less, and that can never be a good thing...
Had this exact “which calibre” conversation over lunch with a young Tasmanian engineer today, he’s looking to move on from shooting bunnies. All the usual suspects were discussed, merits for and against, etc. In Tas, the only deer species is fallow, the pest animal on the farms is Bennets Wallaby. One day, he would like to think he’d head to the High Country for larger deer (reds, sambar, rusa) for which the minimum calibre is .270 / 7mm and 130gr, but that’s a ways off.
I told him to get a 7mm-08. Never owned one myself, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot recently, for various reasons.
After dinner I saw the previous post and having plenty of time to sit back and listen to old Gunblue drone on, I actually managed to stay awake all the way through and I’m glad he agrees with me. The more I think about it the more obvious it becomes, the 7mm-08 really does tick all the boxes, leaving nothing to question, for medium game at short range.
For a first deer rifle, why wouldn’t you recommend a 7mm-08?
I told him to get a 7mm-08. Never owned one myself, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot recently, for various reasons.
After dinner I saw the previous post and having plenty of time to sit back and listen to old Gunblue drone on, I actually managed to stay awake all the way through and I’m glad he agrees with me. The more I think about it the more obvious it becomes, the 7mm-08 really does tick all the boxes, leaving nothing to question, for medium game at short range.
For a first deer rifle, why wouldn’t you recommend a 7mm-08?
Tom I saw your post after I’d posted mine and I thought hmm, there’s a good reason not to own a 7mm-08, but then I did some googling and I had a work quite hard to find a box of 7mm-08 that came close to £60. And a lot less hard to find the usual cheap eastern Euro and regular American ammo at what looks like comparable prices to the other common cartridges. Am I missing something?
"For a first deer rifle, why wouldn’t you recommend a 7mm-08?"
Because I am a tradionalist so would recommend a 7 x 57!
To counter... from a well known ‘knowledgebase’:
The 7x57 is slowly fading into the background as a classic from yesteryear, superseded by the 7mm08 Remington. Since the year 2000, the 7mm08 has grown exponentially in popularity due to the trend towards light weight, light recoiling rifles combined with the availability of high pressure factory ammunition.
Caorach’s standard answer to this is the only sensible answer:
go look in your local gun shop, and see what ammo they have the most of.
Yes, some gun shops claim t be able to order stuff in. But it can take months and months, and they’re entirely at the mercy of the importers.
As someone else said, this means: mainly small deer = .243, mainly big deer= .308.
I have a .308, and if forced to only use that ever again, I would be perfectly happy.
go look in your local gun shop, and see what ammo they have the most of.
Yes, some gun shops claim t be able to order stuff in. But it can take months and months, and they’re entirely at the mercy of the importers.
As someone else said, this means: mainly small deer = .243, mainly big deer= .308.
I have a .308, and if forced to only use that ever again, I would be perfectly happy.
+1! It's as simple as that.
enfieldspares
Well-Known Member
Worse than that D'KNEES we are at the mercy of what the importer of that make of ammunition will bring in. I had an 8x60S for some years. Henry Krank are the UK importer and PPU make the ammuntion and the cartridge cases. Krank's would never bring them...but as they had the agency for the UK nobody else could bring in PPU stuff that Krank's didn't. Fortunately I bough the cases in France and brought them back to the UK. Elsewise I'd have never been able to shoot it.
Many importers want a minimum outer on calibres. Say two hundred or two hundred and forty. So no gunshop will commit to that for the customer who asks if they can get him or her forty rounds of this or forty rounds of that. It's hard enough to have some gunshops get in .22LR or even 16 bore cartridges of a particular brand and specification let alone centrefire metallic cartridges. Change you gunshop? Problem is there are strict laws on carriage of metallic cartridges (even now that the expanding bullet restrictions have been eased).
So, again, having forty rounds sent to you may cost twice their value in carriage charges and as we have holding limits on our UK Firearms Certificates we cannot buy in many cases two hundred at a time. And FWIW and in their defence many gunshops now don't have the capital to lay idle with shelves of ammunition gathering dust when they can turn that money over more quickly on this, that, or any other thing or in the popular calibres.
One local guntrader near me was asked to get in some .303 ammunition. Which they did and had to order so many hundred for a customer who was, at that time, a regular user of it. Forty rounds a fortnight. So as usual they ordered in so many hundred the importer's minimum order. Customer comes in...buys the usual forty and announces the next visit afterwards that he's now discovered reloading so he won't be buying anymore. The guntrader is now left with two hundred rounds of the stuff in dead stock.
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Yes.
It really is that bad.
Even if you are actual personal friends with one of the canniest and most proactive dealers in the country, it is still a monumental ball ache.
Easier if you home load, but not by much. Powders come and go, bullets come and go. You really can’t garuntee any sort of consistency.
Stick to .243 or .308, and you will almost always find something reasonable. Beyond that... all bets are off.
Why on Earth I got a Creedmoor... ???!
Whilst Nathan knows a lot, majority of his writings are just based on internet research, so I take it scepticism and just the view of another.
Most of this practical knowledge is really just long range calibres and bullet experimentations with highly frangible heads.
the 7-08 can be loaded to 50,000 cup but 7x57 40,000 - that’s why the 7x57 is a handloaders cartridge. Factory ammo in 7x57 is weak at best to stay within the cup limits and accommodate for the manynold mauser actions out there, not the strongest large ring, but the ‘96 and small ring ‘98’s.
there is no doubt that if you handload safely, you can take the 7x57 with its larger case capacity to pressures around the 50,000 cup safely, and performance against the 7-08 will be superior without hesitation.
but as said, 7x57 is a handloaders. Cartridge, and if factory ammo is available locally in good choice and quality, and one does not wish to reload, then the 7-08 is a formidable alternative.
think game and country in Selkirk have loads of Norma ammo for the creedmoor if you need
that said..I have taken much game with the 7x57 using Norma 156g oryx, but they load to some fairly decent pressures.
i’m awaiting 200 rws 173g rnsp which I will load with RL19, at moderate velocity. I anticipate it will be quite the combination fir both expansion, penetration and controlled expansion
enfieldspares
Well-Known Member
Any former mlitary cartridge loaded with the correct expanding bullet will be a good deer killer on even he largest of deer. Huge amounts of money went in to their development as "man killing" cartridges and if they'll kill a man they'll kill any deer that ever walked.
I always considered the ideal calibre for the UK and Europe that which the Versailles Peace Treaty was responsible for the 8x60S. It has the powder burning efficiency of the 8x57 but just a slightly longer neck and a slightly longer case so that it loads better with a 196 grain soft point spitzer bullet.
I know shoot only .270 Winchester with Speer 150 grain or .30-06 with Sierra 200 grain. I've always preferred longer bullets. The .270 WCF at about 2,700-2,800fps and the .30-06 when I get my press and everything set up again after near two years of not reloading at 2,300-2,400fps. But I could do both that easily with my one 8x60S. Wish I'd never sold it now!
I always considered the ideal calibre for the UK and Europe that which the Versailles Peace Treaty was responsible for the 8x60S. It has the powder burning efficiency of the 8x57 but just a slightly longer neck and a slightly longer case so that it loads better with a 196 grain soft point spitzer bullet.
I know shoot only .270 Winchester with Speer 150 grain or .30-06 with Sierra 200 grain. I've always preferred longer bullets. The .270 WCF at about 2,700-2,800fps and the .30-06 when I get my press and everything set up again after near two years of not reloading at 2,300-2,400fps. But I could do both that easily with my one 8x60S. Wish I'd never sold it now!
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