I haven't owned a .243, it was just an easy way to reference a hnadful of 6mm rifles or barrels I have owned. Mostly 6PPC for up to 300 yards cutting paper, 6BR for thousand yard plus work. I have shot a handful of .243's and consider it a fine cartridge.
I had a .243 for a while, it's now a 6BR with a much heavier barrel. In it's original form, as the Winchester Coyote, I used it for Silhouette competition. The .243 was not very hard kicking, that rifle had some weight to it which made holding it still a little easier, and it was wonderfully accurate with a wide range of bullets. So I bought a box of 70 grain Nosler Ballistic Tips and as expected, they shot knots on paper. I loaded up some light loads and brought them down to the monthly match, which used full size chickens and pigs, but reduced turkeys and rams for the 300 meter range. The guys I shot with knew right away what the bullets were by those purple tips, and kept commenting about how expensive those bullets were. It was at that match that I got my first 5-Straight on the Turkeys, and won our running pool for that, so yes, amazingly accurate. I did, however, ring two pigs and three rams, which everyone got quite a laugh out of. The combination of a very light load and a super frangible bullet didn't transfer enough energy for marginal hits. I never used them again, and still have a dozen or so in the box on the shelf.
