Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Have you used the .223 for deer/antelope?

Waiting on MD to reply with "Hell, I was there!".......

Pete, do you have any ideal weather or not they have bunx barrels on their rifles?

I have a local friend that told me he routinely uses his .204 Ruger on deer....says it works as well as his .243.....

I had very poor results my first try with the .223.

I hope to try again. If I do, I'm going to be a whole lot more cautious / conservative about what I ask of it. Nosler solid base to the spine (head on under the chin) did not get the job done, the bone stopped it. I mistakenly assumed it would break the neck. Position was exactly what I planned but the outcome was not. We'll see. If the new .223 is accurate with partitions I'll do it just to find out what happens.

Broadside, .204 could be ok .. I have a small cache of the 45 grain Hornady .204 bullets which I would try. If I couldn't get a clean shot to the skull or behind the shoulder raking forward (which disqualifies about 90% of the shots on tags I've punched), I wouldn't shoot, at least not 'til I had a bigger data set to draw conclusions frm.

Tom

It don't.

That said he might be using the .204 inside it's effective range and has never been exposed to loads that really stretch the reach of the .243 Win.

Keep the range inside 300yds and the .223 will work fine.

Start stretching the .223 out as far as a good rifleman can hit bucks and you're going to see a rodeo or 2.

What bullet you were you using? So much depends on the bullets being used, not the caliber. I learned that lesson with a 7mm-08 on elk. I thought it was a poor killer until I switched bullets, then the story changed.
R

I believe that's true.

So a "sharpshooter" is different than a sniper... ie, he's somebody trained in a military manner to a certain level of proficiency?

My guess is it’s Semantics and how the public receives the message. Saying they have snipers running around at night in public parks doesn’t sound the same as sharpshooters killing deer. I guess...

SSS

I had a neighbor that fell for this BS hook, line & sinker (a Democrat of course). He believed that deer hunting should only be done by these highly trained "sharpshooters" and that they were utterly surgical in their precision, as compared to Joe Neandertal who obviously couldn't hit a barn from inside.

The reality is that these "sharpshooters" were just cops getting overtime to ride around the parks spotlighting deer and shooting them at 30 feet with department M16s and AR15s.

I've killed a bunch of axis with it, both bucks and does. Hogs, mouflon sheep, all have been whacked with either my Bushmaster in .223 or my CZ 527. I ran out of Winchester Ranger 64. gr. PowerPoint ammo for my AR so I switched to 75 gr. Speer Gold Dot ammo. I haven't killed anything with it yet, but I am anxious to see how it performs. My little CZ 527 loves the Nosler 50 gr. Ballistic Tip handloads, but I found it also like the Hornady Steel Match 55 gr. HP. I'm looking to head shoot some hogs with that one. It shoots .25 MOA or less when I do my part.

I have killed lots of small game and some deer/antelope with the 223, but it seems odd how much a cartridge that was designed specifically to wound, has become such a killer...

Cant speak for the 75 gr. Gold Dots but the 55 grainers sure work well!

It's not hard to see the choice of projectile makes a wee bit of difference.

My young son has and it worked terrible. Maybe it was the bullets, but it took 4 shots potential killing shots before the deer finally just bled out and fell down. Very little damage inside. The bullets was a 64g Winchester Power Point. I have bought some TTSX's to try from the good result mentioned on the fire. My son used a .257 Roberts this year and killed the deer with one shot. The only reason I am considering the .223 again is because my daughter can hunt this coming year.

See my original post: Nosler solid base. 55 grain, which I didn't say before. I don't think there was a better bullet available at the time.

Tom

The 55 solid base worked great for me. I've got a 172 lb. dressed 8 point hanging on the wall that fell to one of those through the lungs. Range 125 yards, quartering away, bang, flop. Bullet hit at last rib on left side and was recovered, well mushroomed under the hide near the right shoulder.

Try the 55 Hornady sp. I've killed a bunch of deer with those with zero issues. They always fugg up a deers innards worse than 170 gr. sp's out of my trusty old .30-30.

Using a 222, but the same bullet. I shot a 175" mule deer buck when I was a kid in the early 9 0 s. I shot the buck in the chest looking at me at about 150yds using a 50 or 55 grain speer tnt. He fell so hard that he had his legs sticking strait up in the air, looked like a spiders legs moving. He never took a step. Probably c!ose to 250lbs in weight, 7 or 8 years old. My boys and I have killed close to 3 dozen deer with that rifle. We use mostly 55 grain Sierra game kings now. Hunt with confidence.