Long reply, yet I wanted you to know why I tend to choose certain bullets.
Understood and appreciated, as well as your reply JG.
I have no experience with the 223 on game and have some young nephews that are starting to hunt so the reply is appreciated.
I agree deer are comparatively easy to kill, so bullet selection is more driven by dealing with feral pigs here. Most of the ranches where I hunt require pigs to be shot on sight. Letting a pig walk can be grounds to be asked to leave and not return. I like to make sure they drop where they stand, and am not ok with wounding them or letting them die slow deaths.
On the 308, I was curious about your experience. I have shot more than 100 deer and pigs in the last several years helping with culling, management, and pig control efforts.
While many here likely will chime in with differing experiences, the 175 SMK has produced more consistent results for me than any other bullet and worked fine on animals out to 450 yards with one shot DRT's. In examining lots of wounds from them through the years, they seem prone to tumble through producing some dramatic wound channels. They always produce through and through wounds on deer, and I've yet to ever recover one from a deer. On pigs, shot in the skull, they penetrate into the brain and produce DRT results, but usually fragment and do not exit.
Thanks for the reply and you as well JG.
