The longer range leads are shown for illustration purposes only! Never take a running shot beyond your shooting skill levels, you need to believe strongly that you can make the shot before you squeeze the trigger! One hundred yards will be the limit for most hunters on running deer. You must have a safe clear shooting situation! DANGER! Do NOT shoot at running deer in the Midwest & Eastern states unless the SHOT is totally safe to take!

In many southeastern states in the United States, deer are hunted with trail hounds where running shots are the norm. Those Southeastern states include: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina and Virginia. They post themselves at clearings where the hounds will push them through so they can get a quick shot at them in full flight! They use both rifles and shot guns with buckshot. For clean kills the proper leads are required with both weapons. (This information is needed by a lot of deer hunters, so don't give me any flak for posting it.)

We need running deer and coyote targets on most of our rifle ranges to foster some friendly competition. Back around the late 1950's and early 1960's they rigged up a pretty good running deer target near Glen Haven, WI.  I loved those competitive events, --we need more of them today! The winner of each group of 5 or 6 shooter's got (I believe) a frozen turkey or turkey breast.

In this age of technology advancements we need to have moving targets at every rifle range! Lets get it done, some commercial enterprise could make a ton of money designing and selling workable moving rifle target systems. The S.W. Wisconsin Sportsman's Club at Potosi, WI has an excellent running deer target setup (See the deer target on my other Web page).

A deer running 30mph/44fps at 100 yards and a 90 degree angle | 44 X's .092= a 4 foot lead. In a tenth of a second (.1) of bullet flight time the deer would move 4.4 feet. At around 250 yards with a bullet flight time of a fourth of a second (.25) of bullet flight time the deer moves (deer 44 fps X's .25 of /sec. of bullet flight time, (or ¼ of a sec) = 11 feet), it is that simple! Figure your own leads!

1000 ft/lbs. of energy is considered adequate to kill deer sized big game. This means the 243/06 Wildcat, (aka 6mm-06 Wildcat), has the retained energy to be a 600 yard coyote cartridge with 87 grain Hornady V-Max, .400 B.C., or 85 grain BTHP Sierra bullets, or a 500 yards deer cartridge with the 95 or 100 grain bullets. The 85 grain bullet is the lightest bullet I use in my Wildcat Magnum Cartridge.

A whitetail deer can run up to 40 mph, so I added the 40 mph leads; 150 yards might be your farthest running shot at that speed. To figure the leads, you multiply the bullet's flight time by the speed in fps of the target, deer or coyote. That is how far the animal will move during the bullets' fraction of a seconds' flight time.

This 243/06 has 1073 ft/lbs. of energy at 500 yards with the 100 grain bullet above, which is adequate for taking whitetail deer. Compare it in respect to: trajectory, wind drift, and retained energy to the 30/06 at the longer ranges.

This is a flat shooting wind bucking tornado of a cartridge for deer or coyotes at medium to long range. My problem is that I don't have the shooting ability I used to have, and didn't shoot at all for around 25 year span when I was living in city environments.

This 243/06 wildcat with the 100 grain bullet has a bullet flight time, lead and trajectory ballistics that are almost identical to the 7mm Rem. Ultra Mag with a 140 grain Nosler ballistic tip bullet. See my Ultra Mag table, page link.

Whisky Chamberlain of Idaho took 15 consecutive big bull elk, all one shot kills, with a straight .243 Winchester, therefore I believe with the right bullet and will placed and proper ranged shots the .243/06 Wildcat ought to be adequate on elk. I don't want to buy a new larger caliber rifle just to go elk hunting once or twice.

Today, 03/04/07, I just saw on the Men's Channel - Dish-TV CH 218, a massive old Elk shot at over 200-yards & dropped in his tracks with a .243-Winchester with open iron sights. They did not mention the  bullet weight or construction type, however, it proved to me that a Well Placed .243 bullet at 200-yards will deck the biggest Elk that walks. Therefore, my 243/06 Wildcat ought to do the job on big Whitetails, big Mule Deer and on Elk with the Remington Core-Lokt Ultra Bonded bullets.

In the 243 Winchester for big Mule deer & Elk, I would use the 100-grain Remington Core-Lokt Ultra factory cartidges, now when reloading I would use the 100-grain Remington Core-Lokt Ultra Bonded bullets.

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1000 ft/lbs of energy is considered adequate to kill deer sized big game. This means the 243/06 Wildcat has the retained energy to be a 600 yard coyote cartridge, with the 100 or 85 grain BTHP Sierra bullets. That is the lightest bullet I use in this Wildcat magnum cartridge. You're not going to shoot at a running coyote much beyond 200 yards.

As Randy Christensen stated to me at the Potosi, WI's running deer target shoot 10-06-02, that the 243/06 is reamed with a .243 cartridge size reamer with its shoulder taper, the 6mm-06 is reamed with a 30-06 cartridge sized reamer with its shoulder taper. This is what I had always believed but never verified. Therefore, a 243/06 has more powder capacity than a 6mm/06 Wildcat. I'll look up the specs later and list them.
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More on the Potosi Sportsman's Club shoot soon, with photos.

My latest 243/06 Wildcat deer loads | new 95 grain Hornady SST bullet and 100 grain Hornady [Interlock] loads | 58 grs. H-4831sc  Federal 215 PRIs | Both okay in my rifle, --only! I decided to go to "the 100 grain Remington Core-Lokt Ultra Bonded bullets for deer in my 243/06." Look for my .243/06 Wildcat loads on the left side of my split-screen links' page.
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Hornady's New 6mm SST Bullet is on sale now, August 2002 | B.C., may be .355 ?| 95 gr. SST BT tip with a flat-base to provide the needed stability. In 1 in 10" twist barrels at .243 Win. Velocities with a boat-tail the bullet hit target sideways at 200 yds.
I bought a box of 100 for around $18.45 with the tax at Cabela's today, 8/18/02. Will try them in my 243/06 Wildcat and 243 Win.! I'm going to start shooting more flat-based bullets in my 6MM's, the claim is that they are not as hard on barrel's and tend to be more accurate.

The hydraulic shock of this SST bullet ought to be similar to the ballistic tip bullets.  I will only use it beyond 200 yards in  my 243/06, its very accurate in my wildcat. Otherwise it will be the 100 grain Nosler partition bullet for deer.
Click on SST - Super Shock Tipped Bullets Flat-based bullets  HUNTING MAG

Rick Jamison writer for Petersen's Hunting Magazine, July 2002, p- 20, Guns & Loads Article Long Rangers, - http://www.huntingmag.com  says in essence that for deer sized game you need a minimum of 1000 ft/lbs of energy and 2000 ft/sec velocity at the impact range for adequate bullet expansion. The bullet needs a sectional density between .215 to .265 and a high ballistic coefficient for long range shots. This is a great Hunting Magazine, I subscribe through the local school magazine drives.

You can look at the various ballistic tables I have on the Net and determine the approximate outer range limit your cartridge and selected bullet will be capable of killing a deer with a well placed shot. If you can't put the bullet in the vital kill zone don't take the shot no matter how capable the cartridge you're using is at that range.

I used (3) three gallon capped plastic milk jugs and another 1.56 gallon Ultra Sun clothes detergent plastic jug filled with water backed up with numerous old magazines.  That's going through (4) four jugs back to back.

The 100 grain Core-Lokt Ultra bullet demonstrated tremendous explosive performance on the first jug going through all four jugs and found in front of the magazines.  At only 25 yards the mushroomed bullet weighed 84.8 grains with an over 2X .489 caliber diameter that went past the base of the bullet.

This was very impressive bullet weight retention at close range! These bonded bullets will be more dangerous to shoot in respect to ricochet and shoot through scenarios. I would like to see how they would perform on Elk!

Side view - bullet base- left side   (25 yds  100 gr retained 84.8 gr new Core- Lokt Ultra 243 Win.)      nose view

In my 243 Win the 100 grain Nosler Partition bullet blew open (3) three one gallon capped plastic milk jugs full of water sitting in a row at 16 paces, and was still going with no bullet recovery.

The 95-SST blew-up one jug and one tiny fragment caused a very small leak in the second jug - my 243 Win.
I would only use the 95-SST at 100 yards plus on broadside lung shots only - it has a lot of  violent explosive hydraulic shocking power due to all of its energy being shed within the first plastic milk gallon jug of water. [in my 243 Win.]

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