I hunt deer all the time with a 223, like every season somewhere at least. I multi state hunt. I don’t think twice about it and the deer died like they were shot with anything else.
I am not in the small diameter lightweight bullet camp for deer hunting, but I have no issue with it whatsoever for those that choose this route. I have seen many deer killed with the 223 with no bullet failure, and some relatives have used the 22-250 exclusively for deer hunting for many decades with nothing but success.
As stated many times in this post, deer are not hard to kill.
