Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Hunting Deer With Smaller Calibers

Based on this site it's apparent that male human shoulders have gotten much softer in the last generation or two.

Tell that to the New Zealanders who are shooting red stags with .222 and .223s on a regular basis. All the bullet size in the world can't make up for crappy shooting.

Not all the time. Lots shot through the ribs

The New Zealanders who are shooting red stags regularly with .222s and .223s on a regular basis will usually choose a bigger caliber if they are looking for a buck with a really excellent set of antlers at possibly over 300 yards or that doesn't present a perfect shot. I asked this same question just recently to one of them on this forum.

I don’t make it a practice to shoot deer or elk up the ass if they’re not already wounded. But I’ve shot tons, literally, of pigs up the ass with a 223. With good bullets it’ll break the pelvis or hip joints and penetrate up into the abdomen. With a broken pelvis or spine nothing goes far and a finisher is easily administered. I’ve no doubt the same would apply to deer.


Animals are generally not hard to kill if you know what you’re doing. Scramble their lungs, heart, liver, CNS, and they die.

Funny that it’s usually the ethics police crowing about small calibers not being sufficient and here we are talking about shooting animals at poor angles because they’re trophies. It would seem less ethical to my way of thinking to shoot a deer up the rear end with anything than to take a good shot at one with a smaller caliber.

You said it!

ETHICAL shooting. Meaning to take a shot that's a quick kill shot.
So, if a guy is a very fine marksman and shoots his deer or elk from
180 degrees behind the beast, from 100 yards out, using a .416
Weatherby round, that's a likely quick kill shot say some. But using
a .243 Win round it's NOT a likely quick kill shot say some. Maybe
others disagree. If you've laid out thousands of $$$ for this 7-10
day hunt, maybe it does make sense to use a big gun instead of
opting to watch your big rack walk straight away from you. And yes,
the bullet type and quality must be tops.

Sure, go ahead and make that comparison, just like the guys that supported women in the military. Sure there is a woman that can pick up 100 pounds, but I wouldn’t base the success of the entire unit on a good link in a weak chain.

Nice how the very relevant fact of using a .338 Win Mag or .375 with heavy bullets that hold together, when shooting at odd angles seems to be omitted when quoting what I said.

Your “credibility” is disappearing faster than shiit down a toilet. 👊🏻

Nope. Our heads just aren't as hard.

Well I haven't seen any evidence of the small caliber boys changing their views, so maybe their heads ARE as hard. And as far as getting softer shoulders in the last generation, on average far less manual work is done this generation than in years gone by, far less outside activities....except for a small percentage who work-out a lot, they are getting softer.

Yes, but in New Zealand people are not shooting deer with big antlers at 300 yards every day and do not expect too. They can go hunting every week of the year if they want. Mostly they are shooting for meat.

You asked me a leading question - and I replied about myself in the situation you described. But there are a great many people using .223's for the same situation your described. A lot of guys are shooting deer with .223's out to 300 yards and with 77-80 grain bullets they are doing very well at it. As well as those who just use a Hornady 55 grain SP and only have to shoot out to 200 yards max, and usually much less than that.

The .223 is popular for red deer, fallow deer, sika deer and chamois here, and some people Himmalyan tahr also. And the triple-two is part of the hunting culture. So yes, it is prevalent. But, let us also remember that the most popular cartridge in NZ is the .308.

What does all this mean? It means that even big deer are not particularly hard to kill. And when you can shoot as many as you like on every day of the year, with no legal minimums, people gravitate to whatever is practical. The .223 is a practical deer caliber for NZ conditions, having advantages other than just its killing power. But so is the .308.


Oh, and from the South Africans I know, they use the .223 and .22-250 in Africa really a lot.

Would you agree that usually there is a significant size difference, between an ideal meat deer (possibly female) to a big old stag?

What are those jack rabbits ? LOL

If they were jack rabbits, they would get under the enclosure fence that you can see in the background. If they were deer, they could jump over that fence. They must be blackbuck antelope!

Then there is the argument that since shot placement is priority 1, and the .243, with its much lesser recoil, is more conducive to practice and shot placement proficiency, it may be more likely to give the result of desired bullet placement and a clean kill than the .416, even on rear-end shots (assuming appropriate bullet selection for both).

Despite the chest-thumping of many on this site who are impervious to recoil, I would be extremely confident that if you took 40 members here, 20 random .243 shooters and 20 random .416 WM shooters, the average ability of the .243 shooters to place bullets at the desired POI, from field positions, would be substantially greater than that of the .416 shooters.

Blackheart, Yep!! every Damn one of them. Rio7

I've been shooting deer and hogs with a .223 almost exclusively for about ten years. All under three hundred yards with 55-62gr pills. Great results. If I have to shoot longer, I grab one of the larger rifles.

True, but if the distance is only 25 to 50 yds and instead of a .416 it's a .338 or .375, then the difference in accuracy will not be so great that the bigger caliber will not reach up into the vitals with an experienced and capable shooter.