The best "stunt shot" I ever pulled off was a deer killed with a .30-30, loaded with a plain base 150 grain cast bullet driven by 8 grains of Bullseye- probably around 1200 fps. One shot in the neck, smashed the spinal column, DRT. I had a doe tag to fill, spied a couple in the front yard when living in a remote bungalow in Pennsylvania. The closest gun and ammo to hand was the Winchester M54 .30-30 I had back then (I own its twin now) and the aforementioned loads. 50 yards, give or take (it was a big front yard), receiver sights naturally.
One of my Pennsylvania uncles killed an insane number of deer with a .22 Hornet.
Look at all the deer killed over the last 100 years with such prosaic rounds as .38 Special, .32-20, .25-20, .45 Colt, etc.
It's a deer, not an indestructible cyborg. So many writers go around ballyhooing magnum this and improved that, such that impressionable folks start to believe that deer just can't be fairly hunted with anything less. No truer aphorism was ever uttered than "it's the Indian, not the arrow."
