a 7-08 in the vanguard isnt going to kick, the vg is a kinda of heavy, its what i shoot. I run 120 gr hot loads through it and it kicks less than a little savage in .243.

For a scope take a look at Mueller scopes, I run 3 of them and they are realy good scopes and I have put them to the test, they will track with the best of them. I use the turrets as intended I go from 100 yds bump too 200 yds bump to 300 yds and bump it back to a 100 and its back dead on, clarity is top notch, I have dropped my gun off the bench, with leopold bases and rings, picked it up and shot it and was still dead on, there in the USA as well, plus you get a illuminated dot.
link below

http://muelleroptics.com/mu41650igr

I don't recall what your son's intended use will be but, as another thought, the 243 would also make for a great predator or hog round. Year round opportunity for practice vs. just thinking of a deer rifle. Again, just a thought.

the .243 is a 6mm-08. the deer aint gonna know if he was hit with a 6mm or 7mm. it all boils down to cost and availability. the real world difference between the two is in the gun shop cash register not the field.

IMO you have never used these cartiridges on game.

I don't know - with less than ideal shot placement (which is pretty common in real world scenarios), I would imagine the animal might notice an additional 500+ ft lbs of energy with the 7mm-08.

bullet kinetic energy doesnt kill, never will. The sole lethality of a bullet is the tissue damage it does as it passes through organs, bigger bullets tend to leave bigger holes and thats the difference it has nothing to do with kinetic energy.
Shoot a deer in the neck with a 300 mag, miss the spine and the jugglar and the deer escapes even though he was just hit with3k ft/lbs of kinetic energy, hit the same deer with a a 22 hornet in the neck dead center with a puny 600 ft/lbs of energy and it severes the spine and you go retrieve your deer.

seen a 300 mag to the gut, even with all that energy deer still was alive 3 hours later and was finished off, but my lil 22 hornet perfect double lung went 20 yds and expired within 30 seconds, kinetic energy doesnt kill.

Dont think you could go wrong either way.

Maybe you could meet up with a couple of members and let the him shoot both calibers. If he is comfortable with both, let him decide.

Like i said, cant go wrong with either. Im partial to the .243, but thats only because i've used one. I'm sure the 7-08 is a great round too.

I have piled up a lot of stuff with both the 243 and 7mm-08, but the 7mm-08 is a little more versitile, so is the 260, just got one in a 700. Bullet placement is the key to either.

Yup 260 is another good one. Half way between them

Speed/rpm and bullet construction kill

Hit that deer with a solid bullet/ or bonded bullet and your right(unless really close) ...passes through with little damage

Same shot using a bullet built to break up/ expand really quickly like a game king or ballistic tip loaded hot it drops.

Shot to many deer the last two years with an 80 gr ttsx at 3850 ft/s and seen to much tissue/organ damage that wasn't even close to the bullet path. Huge believer in hydrostatic shock.

I gotta go with the 7mm-08 in a Remmy 788 action.

I have used both 243 & 7-08 but still like the 08 better. I use it now with 120gr Nosler ballistic tips and it is deadly.

I just got my son a Savage in 7mm-08 this year and both shoot the same handload ammo great.

As far as optics I have Burris 4 x 12 Fullfields on them and they are great scopes.

very impressive!

Under $300:
http://www.cameralandny.com/optics/minox.pl?page=66000
http://www.cabelas.com/product/Bushnell174-Elite174-4200-Riflescopes/748946.uts

Either caliber would do for Texas game. Maybe I'd go with the 7-08 if I was limited to one gun, maybe not. With a 7-08 you will be able to shoot heavier bullets, the .243 will shoot flatter and faster with light bullets. If he likes to shoot a lot of small game and whitetail is pretty much the biggest game he'll hunt, a .243 is a good choice (since the S2 doesn't come with any 6.5mm options).

I went through this same situation about a month ago. I was looking to get my girlfriend a deer rifle and was split between .243 and 7mm-08. I needed a gun with not much recoil and something thats not so loud it would bother her. I ended up getting the 7mm-08. She loves it, it was the first one I had shot, and I think its a great caliber. I grew up with a .243 and if i would have had a 7mm-08, I don't think I would have ever needed another deer rifle. Hope this helps.

i really like the 7mm08, and really don't like the 243,, the 243 is too limited,, if i am gonna shoot something w/ a 243 then i prolly wouldn't mind shooting the same thing w/ a 223,, i hand load and my 223 kills everything that i wanna shoot, but it is all about shot placement.. and being honest enough w/ myself to know if i should take the shot or not...an all around rifle for me is a 2506 or bigger,, after having sold all my other rifles but 3 in the last couple of days my current do it all truck gun is a remington ltr 308..

i now own two 308's one remington ltr (my son's), and a remington 5r (mine), and a ss model 70 in 300 wsm (mine), and hopefully soon another 223 in (tikka t3 heavy barrel)

dont see it like you do, the 243 is not limited, it will do what your 223 will, only better and do what your 223 cant and thats hunt elk and black bear. Is it the best for elk, nope but remember you said shot placement is the key. The .243 makes the cut for elk in states the 223 doesnt.
The 7-08 is limited to deer and elk the .243 will do that and shoot yotes. it will push a 55 gr to 4k fps and a 100 gr to 3k

The 260 covers both the 243 and 7-08, but it is pretty tough to find ammo.

Here is some scientific evidence to educate you on the importance of kinetic energy and hydrostatic shock....

Ammunition selection for hunting:
Hydrostatic shock is commonly considered as a factor in the selection of hunting ammunition. Peter Capstick explains that hydrostatic shock may have value for animals up to the size of white-tailed deer, but the ratio of energy transfer to animal weight is an important consideration for larger animals. If the animal’s weight exceeds the bullet’s energy transfer, penetration in an undeviating line to a vital organ is a much more important consideration than energy transfer and hydrostatic shock.[79] Jim Carmichael, in contrast, describes evidence that hydrostatic shock can affect animals as large as Cape Buffalo in the results of a carefully controlled study carried out by veterinarians in a buffalo culling operation.

Whereas virtually all of our opinions about knockdown power are based on isolated examples, the data gathered during the culling operation was taken from a number of animals. Even more important, the animals were then examined and dissected in a scientific manner by professionals. Predictably, some of the buffalo dropped where they were shot and some didn't, even though all received near-identical hits in the vital heart-lung area. When the brains of all the buffalo were removed, the researchers discovered that those that had been knocked down instantly had suffered massive rupturing of blood vessels in the brain. The brains of animals that hadn't fallen instantly showed no such damage.

— Jim Carmichael[80]

Dr. Randall Gilbert describes hydrostatic shock as an important factor in bullet performance on whitetail deer, “When it [a bullet] enters a whitetail’s body, huge accompanying shock waves send vast amounts of energy through nearby organs, sending them into arrest or shut down.”[81] Dave Ehrig expresses the view that hydrostatic shock depends on impact velocities above 1,100 ft (340 m) per second.[82] Sid Evans explains the performance of the Nosler Partition bullet and Federal Cartridge Company’s decision to load this bullet in terms of the large tissue cavitation and hydrostatic shock produced from the frontal diameter of the expanded bullet.[83] The North American Hunting Club suggests big game cartridges that create enough hydrostatic shock to quickly bring animals down.[84]

popular contemporary misconception results from the belief that the rapid "transfer" of the kinetic energy of the bullet thereby kills instantaneously through "hydrostatic shock". This term gets used rather loosely to describe quite a lot of things, including some actual wound mechanics, but for the sake of the following discussion I confine my reference to purported effects induced far from the wound cavity that are attributable to a "shocking effect" ascribed to certain bullets or loads.

I don't know where this term originated, but it is pseudoscientific slang. In the first place, these are dynamic - not static - events. Moreover, "hydrostatic shock" is an oxymoron. Shock, in the technical sense, indicates a mechanical wave travelling in excess of the inherent sound speed of the material; it can't be static. This may be a flow related wave like a bow shock on the nose of a bullet in air or it may be a supersonic acoustic wave travelling through a solid. In terms of bullets striking tissue, shock is never encountered. The sound speed of water (which is very close to that of soft tissue) is about 4900 fps. Even varmint bullets do not have an impact velocity this high, let alone a penetration velocity exceeding 4900 fps. Unless the bullet can penetrate faster than the inherent sound speed of the medium through which it is passing, you will not observe a shock wave. Instead, the bullet impact produces an acoustic wave which moves ahead of the penetration. The initial acoustic wave causes no damage (it has been observed in testing passing harmlessly in advance of the bullet's path).

Some people use "shock" in the colloquial sense to describe a violent impact, but it is confusing, especially in connection with the term "hydrostatic" and lends undeserved quasi-scientific merit to the slang. It also tends to get confused with the medical expression attending trauma. We are not describing what is meant by shock to the medical profession. The word shock should never appear in a gun journal, in my opinion.

Before I become too dogmatic and overstate the situation, let me concede that there may be some merit to the idea that hydrodynamic (not hydrostatic) impulse created by bullets which have a high kinetic energy (or perhaps simply a high velocity) and generally exhibit violent cavitation (or merely generate local pressures of a certain magnitude in combination with specific shotlines), can cause some secondary effects due to pressure on the nervous system or circulatory system. In addition to the pressure induced cranial hemorrhage described previously, it is possible to kill manually by nerve "strangulation". In this case actual damage to the central nervous system is not caused, but the signals governing the heart or diaphragm are shut off, resulting in instantaneous unconsciousness or even death. This sort of thing makes for lurid mythology in the martial arts and bad movies, but there is some real science behind it. Certain rare sports fatalities have been definitely attributed to a swift blow which interrupts the cardiac rhythm. Acoustic pressure on the spine can also cause temporary paralysis.

These phenomena may account for the rapid effectiveness of some high-velocity hollow-point pistol bullet wounds, especially in cases in which the victim is not mortally wounded and recovers consciousness within a few minutes. Some special handgun loads (e.g., the THV bullet) have been designed allegedly to achieve this result. Unfortunately, this is an unreliable mechanism of incapacitation, generally obtained at the expense of effective penetration. No bullet yet designed will produce this rapid shocking effect on demand because it depends more on the hit location and perhaps even the timing of the hit than it does on the design characteristics or velocity of the bullet. Many of the handgun bullets designed to use this effect can be defeated by common barriers, such as glass, sheetrock, and even clothing. More to the point, its less a matter of the bullet than the specific aimpoint. Doing this deliberately by hand, even with a profound understanding of the mechanism and vital points, is extremely uncertain; using the passage of a pressure wave from a bullet to accomplish this falls into the freak event category. Such is never an acceptable mechanism for the hunter.

I am a firm believer that much more hydrostatic shock and dramatic kills take place with a lung shor if the animal had just exhaled. The lungs themselves are denser and pass that shockwave better if not full of hot air. Kinda like a water jug, If you shoot it when full of water the jug will be much more deformed than if the jug is full of air. Shoot some foam rubber that is saturated and one that is dry you will also see a dramatic difference in the resulting damage

no such thing as shock or shock wave, maybe hyrdraulic pressure but it aint a shockwave.
read above your post

Perhaps wrong word but it is not an instantanious transfer, very short time I agree, but it does not all happen at the exact same time IMO.

and not always inolving fluids as hydraulic pressure seems to relate to. FWIW, there's no way for you to kill a deer, legally, w/o KE playing a huge factor. Even if you run one over with a truck.

Vanguard atleast site your source when cutting and pasting so it doesn't look as your own words... the ability for people to see your reference material makes it more legitimate

KE is the factor least determining the lethality of a projectile, wound channel being the most important factor.