I'm well aware that the 55 Grain FMJ is not the ideal bullet to take a whitetail with but wondered if anyone has poked one in the lungs with this bullet and the results. It's a long story.........

I've killed a deer with one but not a whitetail, but that was a unique situation, long ago and far away.

223 fmj is designed to wound and disable, not kill, men. As a method to remove two men from combat. So why would one use such a round by choice on deer, particularily large northern deer?

A good round for night dogs and larger varmint.

It certainly has the ability to kill, but not optimun.

I have killed coyote with my deer rifle, coming on to them in a deer hunt, but can't think of a time where I would be hunting smaller game and be forced to use that caliber on a deer.

During tough times my dad killed a lot of deer with a 22 LR but it's neither legal nor optimal. In a survival situation I would easily kill a deer with a 223 FMJ but otherwise I would use a better and legal bullet.

55 FMJ in the 223 (and 222) have killed piles of deer (caribou) in Alaska. Of the folks I've loaded ammo for, when I've replaced their ball ammo with 64 PowerPoints, they have virtually raved about the improvement. Expansion seems to help.

I wonder how many marched off, died and were never recovered?

There was an African gentleman that was using chunks of curtain rod in a muzzle loader to shoot elephants.

He killed some too. Until one stomped him and threw him up in the top of an Acacia tree.

LOL

I have seen a huge batch of Sitka blacktails killed with the 223 and a variety of bullets. Most do not go far...

Why do it?
Make your long story short.

There are so many deer that come into my town during winter that the cops shoot them with .223s and the meat goes to a program to feed needy people.
Don't know what bullet they use.

I shot a couple deer in my errant youth with a Mini 14 and FMJ rounds. With a good lung shot they expire about as quick as with anything else.

Why even try it with a rd designed to wound?

The only time I would ever try it would be in a situation like R H Clark describes and thankfully I've never been in that situation.

Just buy a box of "premium" bullets (TSX's, Partition's, etc.) and go hunting. The .223 is a fine deer round used within it's limits and with the right ammo.

I've shot a couple of coyotes with FMJ because it was loaded in the rifle. Shoulder shots are the way to go on coyotes with FMJ and I'd guess it would be the same with deer...but have no desire to test that theory. I don't think I have any ammo with FMJ bullets anymore....

I'm with the others. I wouldnt do it unless I were really hungry and had nothing else to use.

Well I'm embarrassed to admit many yrs ago I have.
After dressing 4 deer I shot in 5 mins I'm not sure I swallow the whole designed to wound theory. They may have been, thought to be designed that way, but let me tell you even that relatively small bullet does huge amounts of damage when they go tumbling thru a deer size animal. So much so that I even had a comment telling me I shouldn't use guns like 30-06s on deer, I didn't inform the guy it was a .223!
Three deer dropped instantly & one ran approx 60 feet.
I do have to admit, although it was yrs ago, I kinda remembered the bullets being 68-69 FMJs?
I also would not recommend it with FMJ or even any .223, unless circumstances dictated no other choice.

I would think that if they were tumbling, it was because they were too heavy to be stabilized by your barrel's rifling. A longer and heavier projectile usually needs a tighter spin to stabilize.

I could be wrong in this since I have a half crazy friend who served in Vietnam that swears they were designed to tumble and create a larger wound channel. I know they could not be designed to tumble in flight since it would ruin any accuracy, but it may be possible that they could become unstable upon contact with flesh by design. Maybe someone will give us the truth of the matter.

If it's all I have, that's one thing. If a guy has a choice it's a stupid idea.

Fmj's are illegal for hunting anything here in Indiana.

The early FMJs used in Vietnam were absolutely intended to tumble upon impact. The very earliest M16/AR15 rifle had a very slow twist(1 in 14)and all this was by design.

I have taken several deer with .223 FMJs while collecting on a military reservation where I was forced to use a government issued rifle and ammo. Since all I took were head and high neck shots at relatively short ranges, all of them dropped like rocks. A couple, shot through the lungs at longer ranges by the MPs accompanying me, did run a ways before dieing. I certainly would have used some other bullet if I'd had a choice...

Friend of mine started his kids off deer hunting with a H&R .223 single shot with a straight 6X off brand scope. And they used plain old what used to be white box 55gr FMJ. They hunted a great area and the kids killed a bunch of Alabama whitetails with it. He also popped a very large cur dog and another smaller that were after his cattle. As he put it they just "went to sleep" along with assorted coyotes that wandered thru the farm at the wrong time. He didn't know you couldn't kill stuff with them so they worked just fine. He also busted a buck about 180lbs or so hunting with surplus 30-06 ammo left over from a Garand match. He didn't realize that wouldn't work either.

They will kill stuff, but why do it if there are other alternatives? They will not kill quickly unless placement is excellent....like in the brain or neck vertebrae.

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.