Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting .223 for whitetail - yes or no?

I love these threads.
So far there have been lots of fantastical observations from the nay camp, like digging a 0.224” bullet out of a found dead animal and determining it was fired from a 223 (man I hope that guy is working forensics solving crimes somewhere!) to the “a bigger bullet would have resulted in us finding it, but it was shot perfectly! stories.

You can’t read more than any 10 threads on the fire before you read “Bullets matter more than headstamps”, and that ain’t wrong.

Bullet construction and twist rate that it is spun with matter more than anyone really contemplates for the most part, other thanthe guys who understand it know what it means, and I would bet 9/10 of those guys wouldn’t even blink about a fast twist 223 and a good bullet on a whitetail at ANY range.

I’ve killed a [bleep] of stuff (or been there spotting the hit over a shoulder) with fast and slow twist 223/223AI with bullets from 45 gr mono’s to 88 gr ELD-M.
Even the difference in terminal effects between a 75 Amax when spun at 1:9” versus 1:7” is noticeable when started at the same muzzle velocity.

We didn’t do a ton of business up here this fall with 223AI’s, but from what I saw, a 1:7 twist with an 88 ELD-m is a ridiculously underrated combination. The stuff we did kill though, was bang-flopped-dead with both shoulders crushed.

There isn’t a deer walking the planet that I would hesitate to poke an 88 through a shoulder from any angle, at any range that I would shoot a deer at, and in way up North on the East border of BC, they don’t build ‘em much bigger anywhere.

I’ll just put this here… 150 yards, oat fed bear in November. 88 ELD-m, both shoulders and an exit.

And if anyone has killed a whitetail bigger than this with ANY cartridge, I’d be REAL surprised.

175 yards, both shoulders broken, 88 ELD-m caught under the hide on the offside.





Imgur is being a bitch today and not letting me upload the pic of the 3” hole through the ribs that was under the onside shoulder after it was lifted off.





No fuss, no muss, no drama. Shot, half turn, fell down and kicked a leg and that was it. 2 seconds between impact and dead. And I weren’t guessing on what the results were going to be before I touched off the shot.