Light 243 Loads

[harro]

G'day

Does anyone have experience with light loads in a 243.
I am after a load that my 11 year old son can shoot at paper targets out to 150 yrds.I don't want to use cast lead bullets , but was thinking of jacketed 70 -80 grain .I don't care if we are lobbing the bullet out to the target, but I want it to be the lightest recoil I can acheive.He has shot my normal loads but after 5 or 6 rounds I can see it is starting to affect him.If I could get the velocity down to 2200-2400 ft per sec I think it would be ideal.
Has anyone got any advice.I repeat this is not going to be used for hunting just targets , and the slower the better.

Thankyou for your time

harro

 

[Lynn]

Harro
If you can get some powder called Trail Boss it is very very mild.
8 grains of Trail Boss and a 100 grain bullet is a good starting point.You can put up to 16 grains in a 243 case and it is still a very very mild load.
It looks like little donuts and it even has a hole in the middle of the round kernels.You can't put enough of it in a 243 case to get 30,000 PSI of pressure so it is also very safe.
It comes in 1 pound bottles but it only weighs 9 ounces.
Waterboy

 

[steve stanley]

Buy one of the recoil pads that you wear such as the(past) shield they do a wonderful job of taming recoil. I'm sure he would have no problems with a full power load with one of these. Steve do a search here and there are several threads that discussed them and offer sources for them. Steve

 

[benenglish]

Does anyone have experience with light loads in a 243. ... If I could get the velocity down to 2200-2400 ft per sec I think it would be ideal.

I have experience with reduced .243 loads. Both Trail Boss and add-ons to reduce felt recoil are good ideas. PAST pads are good but I'm too fat to get into most wearable recoil pad rigs, so I tend to fall back on the old trick of putting a bag of lead shot between the rifle butt plate and my shoulder

However, I also recommend you have a look at this document:

http://www.hodgdon.com/PDF/Youth Loads.pdf

and follow the advice therein. I don't cast bullets, so I follow their cast bullet recommendations with jacketed bullets. It's always worked well for me.

The relevant portion of the document reads: "...we recommend our 60% rule with H4895. By taking the maximum charges listed in our 27th Edition reloading manual with any given cartridge and multiplying it by 60%, the shooter can create a 1500 to 2100 f/s load, depending on the bullet weight shown. This works only where H4895 is listed."