Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting For those who use 22 caliber for deer

I have taken 4 does with my Savage 22HP made in 1917. Between 20 and 50 yards. I shot in the lungs went about 75yrds, without snow I don't know if I'd have found her. The other three were neck shots and all dropped, never found any bullets. Used rem 70 grain sp. I know it's not in the same class as the 223, 22-250 ect.

I've used 55gr Remington soft points, V-Max and Ballistic Tips on hogs and deer out of a .22-250rem. The noslers seemed to give the best performance. I've since switched to 60gr Hornady soft points and that is a very tough bullet. It always exits on broadside shots, even at 300 yards. I question if it would even expand enough out of a .223.

The 55gr V-Max seems to work better on large game at .223 velocities but still not great. It needs a heavier but still fairly soft bullet to perform it's best imo. The one spike I've taken with a 63gr Sierra smp worked flawlessly and exited at about 200 yards.

I have recovered a fair number of bullets 0f 60 and 62grn. Soft points provide a picture perfect mushroom out to 300 yards or so. Truly impressed with all of them.

A .223ai is my doe - meat gun, I like watching the head snap. FYI, you get no blood shot meat when you shoot deer in the head. So far I never recovered a 62gr ttsx or 68gr bthp out of a .223.

I killed a couple deer with a .223 bolt rifle years ago, using 55 gr. Sierra Spitzers. Worked good with behind the shoulder shots. The wildest .22 centerfire I've ever heard of, is a 6mm Rem. case necked to .224 diameter.

It is designed around a fast twist barrel and heavy controlled expansion bullets. The designer called it a .224 Texas Trophy Hunter.

The main reason is that it works, in spades. Easy and comfortable to shoot , and doesn't ruin any more meat than the bigger cartridges do.

^^^This^^^^

A 62 gr TSX or 60 gr Nosler Partition works well too.

I took a 3x4 Mule deer buck 20 years ago with a borrowed .22-250 shooting 55 grain Sierra Gamekings after discovering a scope issue resulting in a miss with my .300 Savage.

The little 55 grain bullet was planted behind the shoulder into the lungs at 200 yards and dropped the buck right away.

My Dad has shot lots of deer and some feral hogs with his .22-250 over the years.

For some reason I would like to use my .220 Swift to take a deer or antelope at some point.

I have seen lots of deer taken with .224’s and largely they kill as well as the .243 or .250-3000 in my experience. I have seen a handful of flub-ups but I believe these were largely due to improper bullet selection and improper shot placement.

I tend to eschew plastic tipped bullets for deer in .224 caliber. They are designed for varmints and coyotes.

A sierra gameking, nosler partition or accubond, even one of the monometal bullets are what you want.

The main reason my family used it was when my kids were smaller, they handled the light recoil from a .223 much better than a .308 or larger caliber.

The .223 has been a mixed bag for us. My son nailed a medium sized boar hog with his bolt .223 and rolled it on the spot, no tracking. However, the first deer he ever shot with the same rifle involved a 4 hr. Tracking job and it was just a miracle we were able to find it.

My daughter shot her first deer with a 16” AR-15 and it didn’t make it 20 yards. However, we lost the second one she shot with the same rifle.

I’ve shot one deer with my sons .223 bolt gun, straight through the shoulders and we almost lost it. Blood trail ran out after about 50 yards and just got lucky doing circles out in the woods when I came across it. The bullet left a decent size exit hole, and I’m not sure why it stopped leaking.

All shots were using factory Hornady red box 5.56 TAP with the 75 grain T2 bullet. At the time it was supposed to be one of the most devastating.223/5.56 rounds available.

As the kids got bigger, they’ve moved up to 300 Blackout super sonics, 30-30s, and .270s. They’ve had much more consistent recovery results while hunting with these rounds. They simply put the game down faster on average than with the .223.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure every deer they hit with their .223s died. But we only recovered about half of them.

Back in the early 1970s worked with a guy, whose only "deer" rifle was the same 22-250 he killed woodchucks with. He used Winchester 64gr Power Points for deer, some 55gr varmint load for the rodents. Never any issues with deer that I can recall, as he usually got one each year.

I loaded up some of the then new Nosler 60gr Partitions for one of my 22-250s years back. Hit on a load that printed within a half inch at 100, of the varmint loads I used. Kiiled two doe with that load, both dead on the spot.

Not yet, but it’s on the list. I have a bunch of Nosler 64gr bonded, maybe some TTSXs I can load. Would also consider Gold Dots. Very little doubt about the outcome on deer. A bear would make me think about it some…

Have a local friend who hunts elk with a .220 Swift--but he only hunts cows anymore, and they're often in herds, and he doesn't want the bullet to exit and possibly hit another elk. (He's a retired outfitter/guide, among other things he's retired from. For guiding he carried a 7mm Remington Magnum, and the bullets often exited.) He shoots cows with the Swift behind the shoulder, using the same 55-grain softpoints he uses for coyotes, and they die pretty quickly.

Cousin who lives back in West Virginia. bought a 22.250 model 700 back around 1980 or so.. He got Orchard Permits in WVA for $2.00 each year and can shoot 25 deer a year on it, but NO one is is ever counting.

His wife's family was up from Florida for hunting season and left their guns at home, since Ben had so many at the time.
so Ben's deer rifles were all being used. it was a " bad season" and they were almost seeing nothing. They get home and Ben's wife tells them, there is a big dead buck up across a 5 acre field she shot dead from the kitchen window, under an apple tree.

Been asked what she used and she told him, what ever gun you left behind here... the 22.250 Didn't believe her, but they sent one of the kids up there to look and he found a fairly large buck up there dad, running back to the house with his pants on fire. Gloria's brothers and Ben walked up there, to retrieve the deer. Before they left, they asked where had she shot it at, doubting it all. Answer was, you said it was light for deer, so I aimed at its eyeball.

When they got up there, that is exactly where the deer had been hit... right in the eyeball. She shot from a rest on the high window ceil. Ever since that time, Ben has used nothing but his 22.250 for deer, to the tune of 25 to 30 animals a year.
Ammo used has been Remington 22.250 ammo with a 55 grain SP bullet, nothing fancy.

was back east last summer, and we dropped by the see Ben and Gloria. Told me had given away all of his rifles to others, when he turned 70 and that season shot his biggest buck ever. But he kept the 22.250. That is all he uses, but then since 1980, that was about all he has used.

He went from a 270 down to the 22.250, but says its a better killer than the 270 because shot placement is easier due to lack of recoil. That is 25 plus deer a year, for 40 years. His boys grew up on venison and pork. Beef tastes funny to them.
That 22.250 has taken down anything he shot on his property down there.

just plain worked.

When I was growing up there were two neighborhood boys (friends of mine) about my age and their father bought them new deer rifles when we were all around 14 years old. Turns out that they thought the .270WCF kicked a lot more than their 22-250 and .222 Rem Mag, so they went back to the .22cal bolt guns. They killed the heck out of deer with them, using green box Remington PSP ammo. They shot those rifles pretty well.

The deer we have shot with a .223 couldn't have had anymore damage if they were shot with a .300 WM. Mulies or WT's from 50 to 150 yards, shot with 55gr TTSX, none of WT's took a step. The mulie ran about 40 pouring blood out of both sides, that we could see as it ran.

No bullets were recovered.

I shot a handful of deer and hogs with the 62TSX at 3300+ and it worked well even on lung shots, so long as the animals were close enough for impact speed to still be high. Performance/damage didn't look much different from high-speed .257/.264/.284 mono bullets I've also used. I've used that same bullet a bit at lower impact speeds and the results/damages were not as good.

Shot placement is king, but it’s definitely a lot easier to blow the guts out of a deer with a 30/06 than a 223.

Saw a buck shot with either a TNT or an SXSP from a 22-250 one time. Probably last rib.

That deer lasted about 2 steps and fell over dead.

Pushing a frangible bullet nearly 3800 fps and he got sick in a hurry.

Not saying that would be the case every time but there's something to be said for turning things loose on the inside.

Those 55 grain Gamekings are a fine deer bullet from a 223 or 22-250. We probably tried em in a 222 or Swift but I don't recall.

When I was a kid starting out hunting in the early 80’s all my Dad had was a .222 and a 22-250 so it’s what we used. All my friends used 222’s and 22-250’s as well with some 223’s also thrown in.

As I grew as a hunter I used a lot of larger cartridges for deer and such. After several years I realized they didn’t do anything the 22 CF’s didn’t do, except recoil more and cost more to load and shoot.