Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Chambering for low recoil deer round

I have a Rock River AR in 6.8spc that my buddy's 12 yr old daughter uses during the youth season.

Factory Hornady 120gr sst. Deer don't go far.

From your list the 6.5G gets the nod.
6 Rem and 257 Roberts kill stuff with little recoil and room to grow.

No need to limit to my list This was meant more like, what is working for you all.

The .30-30 has killed a few over the years.

Add a 243 to that and I'm in. 6mm Rem is a slightly better round but ammo is hard to find and rifles ever harder.

That's another good choice.

Absolute powderpuff on the shoulder if you bump down to 125/130gr bullets, and they still kill the [bleep] out of stuff.

I think of the 6.5 Creedmoor as a low recoil deer round, although I realize it will work for bigger critters too. I usually use 127-130 grain bullets for medium game, and with them 6.5 CM recoil is quite low, or so it seems to me.

Anything you list will work just fine. Any superiority will be determined by the specific set of circumstances you're operating under.

If the purpose of asking is to help you select a caliber for a new rifle buy, it should be dictated as much by what else you're going to do with the rifle as anything.

7mm/08

243 win. 40 grains of 4831 and a 100 interlock. Great load and will shoot an inch in anything. 6 br is cool too, but with the availability of 6 creedmore, it'd be hard to beat

300 Hammer in an AR or a bolt gun.

When they were younger, my boys used the 243 Win Hornady Lite 87gr SST loads to good effect. All one-shot kills. Muzzle velocity was 2,577 fps out of the Wby Youth rifle's 20" barrel. It was a very mild-recoiling load.

The 6.5 Grendel is very good low recoil round and performs way better than you might think with a good hunting bullet in the 120 gr. range. I am able to speak from experience as my neighbor friend and I ride and look for hogs several evenings and nights a week. He has an AR that we load with NBT and I swear I can't see a lot of difference between the Grendel and a .308W with a 150 bullet. Trajectory is about the same and the hog goes down. I have used the rifle for DRT shots at 300 yards.

I have done well with a 6.5 Grendel as well. 100 grain all copper was a preferred load with even less recoil.

Still I am liking 90 grain CX even more from the 6mm ARC.

We used one of these last year and it worked very well.

Bb

.223 Rem gets my vote.

I used it last season to fill my tag. 75 grain ELDM.




P

Handloaders can get it done with almost anything. In factory I like the Grendel. My sons and grandson live in VA, where the minimum caliber is .23, effectively .24 since there are no .23s out that AFIK. When I was looking for a rifle for my then 9 year-old grandson, I couldn’t find a 6.5 G youth rifle, so he got a 7.62x39 and has killed 3 with it with no issues. However the good ammo for it has gotten difficult to find. They did find one box of the SSTs today, the first in a long time.

Handloading turns a multitude of cartridges into the right cartridge. A 6mm 80gr, 6.5 100gr, a 7mm 120gr, .308 130ish gr, pick your headstamp for 2500 or so fps. Haven’t done a .224 on deer yet but hear they work.

If the option is available to you, a suppressor makes a big difference in recoil. I was amazed when I first tried one.

Lots of good answers so far.

For me a lot depends on circumstances. A trim bolt gun in .223 or .22-250 with an 1:8 twist would be my first inclination these days. Don't overlook the 6mm Max.

The modern bullets perform so well there really isn't a lot more needed. Lately I've been using a .223 with 77gr TMKs for deer.

I can tell you that the 55gr Hornady sp has worked very well out of a .22-250 and my sons first deer were taken with 243s and 85gr tsx with no drama.

Much depends on the person doing the shooting. Their stature, experience, familiarity with the gun and how it fits all play into perceived recoil.