Early 243 Win story. Back around 1966, maybe 67, I had a deer lease with a guy that was small of stature, maybe 140 lbs. He loved to hunt and was a darn good shot. When in the army, he tried out and qualified for a number of rifle marksman teams at several places he was stationed during his time in the army.
He bought a nice .243 rifle, for its lighter recoil, to use deer hunting. Rifle shot well for accuracy. So, for two deer seasons he used it. Maxed out his limit of deer he could shoot each season. Problem was, he never dropped one with his 243. He'd make a darn good shot placement on a deer and it'd run, maybe 50 - 100 yds or more each time. Luckily, where we hunted, that was not a real problem, so we always found the deer.
Last deer he shot with his .243 convinced him to get a larger cartridge rifle. I had heard him shoot one morning and around 15 minutes later I heard him empty his 22 Hi-Standard pistol that he always carried when hunting. About an hour later, I returned to our small cabin on our lease and there was a nice 4 point deer hanging from a tree. He seemed to be shaken up about something. Asked him what was the shooting of his 22 pistol about? He told me to look at the forehead of the deer. I did, lots of 22 holes between its antlers.
As usual, my friend had waited at least 10 minutes to leave his deer stand to find the deer that had run off after he'd shot him. He told me, he'd bent over its head and grabbed an antler to move him, when the darn deer jumped up and proceeded to try to gore him.....he held on with one hand and managed to un- holster his pistol and empty it into its head. P.S., if I remember correctly, his 243 round was well placed in lungs and had caught part of its heart.
The next week, he traded in his .243 for a .308.
As I recall, back then, we had concluded there was nothing wrong with deer hunting with a .243, that the problem was the bullets being too hard or something like that. Just didn't do much damage to a deer for a quick kill with it.
