Both have applications in the shooting and hunting world, and both are going to overlap a lot in those applications. Perhaps one of the biggest reasons is that niche is already filled by a cartridge such as the .243. While all of these rounds will not be graphed and discussed, the averages will back up that our selected rounds still give an accurate reading of how the two cartridges are similar and different from each other. arrived on the scene in 1952, it prompted gun writer Warren Page to … I agree with Mark. It's a good all around caliber as you said. We also think that it is important to note that though we are looking at all of these categories individually and that is only giving you part of the picture. The light .243 cartridges are much flatter and give the .243 around a half inch advantage of the 6mm Creedmoor rounds. The rounds from both cartridges tend to hang around the 8.5-12 ft.lb energy range. Like everything we have covered, it all depends on what you’re shooting at, and we will discuss this more when we get to the applications of these cartridges. Check Prices . While the .243 has a rich history in the hunting world and is often a young sportsman’s first centerfire rifle, the 6mm Creedmoor has yet to break into that world. Some rounds even shoot differently out of different rifles. The reason is the smaller diameter. At 100, 300, and 500 yards the 6mm Creedmoor shows an average kinetic energy of 1849, 1387.25, and 1023.5 ft.lbs. I see no advantage. As you can see, we are only comparing a limited number of different rounds for each cartridge. For that, they still have plenty of bullet energy. There is still a part missing to this story though, especially for those in the hunting realm. It seems like the internet is inbetween a Hornady 95g V-max and Hornady 143g ELD-x precision Hunter. That is my choice, (but I don't own a 6.5) the 223 and the 243 are not similar caliburs, the 243 is way more gun. So if you are concerned with penetration, this section and the previous are going to be especially important to you. Barring those two rounds from the conversation, there is only a .6” difference in bullet drop between the .243 Winchester vs 6mm Creedmoor rounds. Perhaps the biggest obstacle in the way is just availability at this moment. It’s also important to recall how the 6mm Creedmoor rounds showed the trend of maintaining velocity, which also led to better trajectory, once you got out to the 300+ ranges. Even with the lightweight .243 rounds, which show the flattest trajectories, the 6mm Creedmoor holds an advantage throughout the entirety of the range, though the differences in the average are less than one inch at the 300 and 400-yard mark with all rounds in play. Required fields are marked *. Dense woods for whitetails with shots averaging around 100 yards and you probably don’t care at all what the BC of your round is. Regardless of what the shooting situation is, recoil is going to run through your mind at some point when deciding on a cartridge. continues to ride the crest of the 6mm-caliber wave, the tried-and-true 6mm Rem. If bc is available in the 243 and you choose not to use it to make the other look good. So do lots of others like the 223 Rem. BCs could also have several articles written on the variables that go into its calculation, but for now, we will stick with the basics. It’s true that the 55 and 58 grain .243 rounds have a lot more velocity than all the other rounds, not just the 6mm Creedmoor rounds. From 50 yards to the zero range, there is no significant difference between any of these rounds and that is often, not always, the case when comparing two centerfire rifles that are used for hunting. There is not as much to go on regarding its performance, but that’s part of the intrigue of this 6mm cartridge; what is its full potential? Both will kill coyotes.I am assuming you are buying factory. At these ranges, the trajectory is not the issue as much as stopping power, which we will look at shortly. I’d been shooting the .243 for years, but when you load target bullets to full length in the .243, they won’t fit in an AR-10 magazine. We can look at some of the ballistic and other performance data we have already covered to look at accuracy in a roundabout way. As the bullets move out to the 200-yard range, we do see a slight difference between the cartridges when taking all of the rounds into account. Sign-up today to get our new articles, exclusive gun discount, giveaways (free AR-15 anyone?) A hunter who has a good .243 will be able to handle the deer species, including mule deer, as there are a good number of premium bullets available in both factory loaded and component form. With the velocity and BCs, that’s enough in our mind to lean a little towards the 6mm CM for long range shooting and putting the bullet on target. Any competition will use hand loads. The 6mm Creedmoor came to light as a wildcat, but not in the traditional way. Your email address will not be published. And we usually mention this in any comparison where the prices are similar, but a few dollars isn’t going to make a difference to most as long as you’re getting the ballistic and terminal performance that you need. For the long-range trajectory, the 6mm Creedmoor shines. With the stability in the velocity department and the high BCs, we weren’t surprised at the trajectory data. It’s a good way to compare cartridges, but when actually looking for rounds to use, you will need to pay more attention to the individual characteristics. What Are They?Powder CoatingCan Any Bullet Be Powder Coated?Equipment NeededThe ProcessNeed More Convincing? Handloading, both of them can become competition cartridges as well. Recoil, when severe enough, can easily throw off a shot. When hunting larger game, you often need your round to be able to penetrate through thick skin and tissue to reach vital organs. From the muzzle out to 200 yards, the .243 rounds have about 100 fps more velocity than the 6mm Creedmoor rounds. #6mm #243 #rifle They do differ in their case lengths, with the .243 having a slightly longer casing. My buddy John Snow—now editor of Outdoor Life—was writing an article about the pleasures and pitfalls of developing his own cartridge. There wouldn’t be many more 6mm hunting cartridges added to the lineup until the 21st century; Remington’s 6BR, and the 6mm PPC certainly made a splash in the target world; the .240 Weatherby is certainly a speed demon, and Winchester added the .243 WSSM to the short/stubby lineup. At short ranges, there was less than an inch of difference between the two cartridges of similar bullet weights at 200 yards and about half an inch difference in favor of the .243 rounds when we factor in the 55 and 58grain .243 rounds. THE BEST GUN DEALS AND HANDPICKED GEAR RECOMMENDATIONS, Subscribe to our Newsletter and we send you the best deals right into your inbox. We don’t think you are going to be taking a lot of 300+ yard shots with these cartridges but if you do think you will, the 6mm CM rounds are a bit flatter, but both cartridges are manageable. A good friend will help you move a body. In that case, it is going to depend on the design of the bullet and other properties. Slightly. We can still see that both have pretty impressive trajectories for factory rounds though they are on the lighter side for both of these cartridge types. Friday, February 22, 2019. by Philip Massaro - With a cartridge overall length of 2.71 inches, it fits perfectly in a short-action receiver; the parent .308 Winchester defines the standard short-action receiver length. Regardless, it’s an interesting topic and it can be useful information and can make a difference when dealing with heavy winds. At this particular moment, you don’t have many options when it comes to factory loads. .223 Remington. Let’s be honest with ourselves for a moment, most of us can deal with recoil, it’s no big deal, but isn’t shooting much easier when dealing with lighter recoil? If you look anywhere on the internet concerning cartridge comparisons and especially how they compare to stopping power, you are going to find some pretty heated arguments on which bullet characteristic best equates to the amount of stopping power. And overall, we see that these rounds from both cartridges have incredibly low recoil compared to say the .30-06 or .308 cartridges which sport recoil energies in the 20-25 ft.lb range. Popular manufacturers of the .222 Remington in a Predator/Varmint … They are all intrinsically related, and all are important factors for how well they can take down game. We will also bring these tables back at the end of the article when we discuss the applications of both these cartridges. Too much velocity with an incorrect twist rate or a certain bullet design and you can get an unstable flight with leads to inaccuracy. Either way, all of the heavier rounds only showed between 9.6 to 12 inches of bullet drop at 300 yards, which is more than manageable. The theory behind sectional density and penetration is that the heavier the bullet, the more mass that is behind it when it hits the target. For the 6mm Creedmoor, we like the Hornady ELD-X Precision Hunter 103gr round. Trajectory is similar, and wind drift is similar, with the 243 having a slight edge. IMR 4064, Max load for the rifle, fed 210 is 3400+ and unreal accurate in most factory & … Like we mentioned earlier, there are some more 6mm Creedmoor factory loads coming onto the scene this year, but you’re still really limited if you aren’t hand loading. The heavier .243 rounds and the 6mm CM rounds all carry over 1,000 ft.lb of energy at 300 yards which when placed well, is more than enough for whitetail sized game. Using this as a form of background information, it will make the proceeding sections of this article make a little more sense when we do see similarities and differences in how these two cartridges behave. I’d left the reamer in a toolbox and the dies were sitting on a shelf in my house, literally gathering dust,” he says. The .243 is a necked down version of the .308 which allows it to take the smaller diameter bullet, the .243. A bullet with a higher sectional density should have greater penetration than a bullet with a lower SD. A lot of different variables go into calculating a bullets BC but it, along with velocity, are big factors in the how the bullets trajectory and wind drift behave. One way to determine the amount of penetration two cartridges will have is to compare the sectional density (SD) of the bullets used. The ballistic coefficient of a round is simply letting you know how well the bullet resists drag and wind drift and thus, the easier it will be to group shots at long range. You can look at the data all you want, but if you can’t shoot, it’s not going to do you much good. 5 Creedmoor. If we look at hunting, the low recoil again is an advantage. It’s fairly inexpensive compared to other rounds with similar performance. Like our smaller data set, the 6mm Creedmoor rounds tend to maintain velocity better and outperform the .243 rounds downrange. Let’s take a look at the averages when we incorporate some more .243 factory rounds that are available. From the muzzle out to the 200-yard mark, we see a lot of the .243 and 6mm Creedmoor rounds interspersed in the graph, but once they hit the 200-yard mark and beyond, we definitely see the 6mm Creedmoor rounds group together at a higher velocity than the other similar weighted .243 rounds. It was initially a varmint hunting gun, but the arrival of larger grain bullets and more powerful charges providing more velocity allowed this round to be adapted to larger game such as deer. The two .261 SD CM rounds also have slightly heavier bullets than the .243 rounds by about 3-8 grains. For factory loads, both of these cartridges are excellent choices for target shooting. The .243 rounds have lower bullet energy consistently through the 500-yard mark, and like the velocity, they tend to bleed energy at a higher rate than the 6mm Creedmoor rounds. It pretty much limits out with deer regarding large game hunting as we will discuss in this article. This round has high velocities, but it does bleed off speed at a high rate, and by the time you get out to 500 yards and beyond, it doesn’t perform any better than other rounds regarding velocity. The 6mm Creedmoor—in the same fashion of its larger counterpart—fits those bullets very well. And by flat we mean there is a less pronounced drop in elevation over time. With the averages listed at the end most of these sections, you will see that the trends hold true when we bring in a lot more .243 rounds into the equation. As we said, it’s also important in how that speed affects other components of a bullets flight and reaction on impact. However, having been with us since 1955, the .243 Winchester is a very effective hunting cartridge, especially inside of 500 yards, and when used on game animals of suitable size and build. They both take the same caliber bullet and have nearly identical neck and base diameters. And that’s not to say it hasn’t been used in the field, it’s just not to a point where its performance has broken into the public domain. That’s not to say there are not .243 rounds with better BCs, but they usually hang in that .25-.45 area. You can throw those two out if you want. If we look at the 6mm Creedmoor and .243 Win rounds of similar bullet weights, we still see an advantage in the BC’s of the 6mm rounds.