Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Anyone Ever Shoot a Deer With a 223 FMJ?

You advocate using .223 FMJ's on deer sized animals?

The .223 is certainly capable of efficiently killing deer, even with FMJ's if it's in the right hands, but there are better choices for sure.

FMJs do kill, but unless they hit bone (which can make quite the mess) they often do the dreaded "penciling" through. A couple deer and several coyotes I saw hit directly through the lungs with them ran a couple hundred yards and lived for a couple minutes before they died. I would choose something else if I could.

Vietnam and the Middle East isn't much of an indicator, due to the test subjects often being hopped up on opium. At least that was my experience. FMJs (ball) are cheap to produce, which is partially why the military uses them. The Hague Convention is another part.

No one here has said they wouldn't work, just that they are illegal and that there are better bullets than a FMJ even in 223.

I'm sure there are experienced folks here that could pile them to the sky using FMJ's, but I'd have to pass unless it was all I had.

FMJ's of any kind is not legal for big game hunting ie white tail deer were I live. I don't know about other states but I would bet if caught the fines would be fairly steep. Check the game laws were you live in this regard. If its against the rules why teach rule breaking to your children, that sort of thing is just not good from the get go. Guns and hunting is under attack and why give them the ammo by being this irresponsible?

People drive over the speed limit, drift thru stop signs, work extra jobs under the table and don't pay the tax. All illegal and all in front of the kids.

The question was has anyone shot a Deer with one and what were the results.

I was thinkin exactly the same thing about some posts

Just to add the rifle I used was an early Ruger M-14, so the bullets were stabilized in flight but definatly not after they hit the deer!

Anybody confirm my memory on early FMJ surplus bullets being 68 or 69gn weights?

I personally won't use them and my friend has also moved on to better projectiles. Still it was an eye opener for me that the FMJ worked that well. Wouldn't have expected it. And keep in mind tons of African game has been collected with the old round nosed FMJ in various calibers from 6.5 up. WDM Bell comes to mind. Paraphrasing a quote often attributed to him claims "...no soft-nosed bullet ever polluted my bore" and I believe he was referring to the 7x57 as used on plains game. I doubt the round nosed version FMJ created any larger a wound channel than will the spitzer; possibly less.

citation?
reasoning?

OK, I've shot a lot of stuff with FMJ's from the M16 and witnessed even more. They kill stuff, from monkeys to elephants and everything in between. It is not always graceful like Hollywood, and where one fails there are more to toss from the -16. There were even extra magazines available (imagine that!) and on occasion they were used. Even on people.

My previous comments were based on experience, not speculation.

To answer a question above: Single body hits with the 5.56 FMJ or 7.62x51 don't always stop critters or people, but they usually slow them down. Hits to the CNS are 100% reliable. Multiple hits with either will stop people and critters for the most part, but I hauled an NVA to an EVAC hospital one day that had been hit over 20 times in the lower torso and legs with a minigun. He was alive when we dropped him off at the hospital. Elapsed time from the shooting to the hospital was about 30 minutes.

The 5.56mm as used in Nam was prone to tumble but I never believed it was intentional as a design feature. The overturning moments countered by twist rate are proportional to the density of the medium a bullet transits. In other words, one helluva lot greater in flesh than air. It is quite common of BTSP bullets to tumble after they hit anything. Not guaranteed, but not the least bit uncommon. I've seen wounds from the -16 that represented both outcomes.

Having said that, I would not use one on game unless there was absolutely no other alternative supported by supreme need.

+1

I've used the 223 and 22-250 on caribou with a variety of bullets. I've seen a number of both caribou and moose killed with the 55 FMJ in ARs and Mini-14s. The 55 FMJ often works very well, about like a Barnes X. Then again, sometimes they flip and you get a Berger effect. I would certainly pick a FMJ over most of the 55 SP versions many people seem to like. There are better bullets in the 223, but the FMJ can be effective when used correctly. As with anything you push through a 223 barrel however, you just don't have the nicer margin of error that you get with a more powerful round.

I've killed a truck load of feral hogs with the 55 grain FMJ. About half of them were DRT, & the other 1/2 ran about 75 yards & died. I shoot hogs with them because on the big boars at our ranch, I don't give a Schitt if they run off & die.

On the other hand, I hate to see some one wound & loose a deer. I wouldn't recommend using them for deer. I respect deer hunting & the deer more than that. Only way I'd use them on deer would be if i was starved & had nothing else to use.

Sounds like an honest contribution to the question asked.
I would suspect about the same results had a 308 been used with SP bullets!

In a former life I had a job which often required me to dispatch injured deer and also to shoot dogs that were actively chasing deer. I used a .223 in a 1/12 twist Colt AR-15 SP1 for much of that time, using both 55 gr M193 FMJ and also handloads with the 60 gr. Hornady FBHP bullet.

I probably killed 15 deer and 20 dogs with each load, and I could never tell a difference in their effect. Everything went down quickly if hit well. Nothing ran more than 50 yards if hit well.

Although I do not endorse deer hunting with FMJ's, I think they may be a better choice than many .223 "varmint" bullets because they penetrate better and still kill well.

I really don't want to detail in writing in a public forum all of this stuff. Hell it would require about an hour to type it all down. But if you really want to know,PM me a cell phone number and I'll call you. I can talk a lot faster than I can type.