What we need is a good, effective, North American deer hunting cartridge and rifle combination. We need a rifle that is reliable, accurate, easy to operate, and easy to carry. And we need a cartridge that can be chambered in short, light rifles and still not kick the shooter out from under his or her hat; a cartridge with a maximum point blank range (+/- 3" from the line of sight) of at least 200 yards.

Three older, established cartridges come to mind. These are the .30-30 Winchester, .300 Savage, and .32 Winchester Special. All three shoot a 150-180 grain bullet fast enough so that it won't rise or fall more than about 3 inches until it is out past 200 yards when properly zeroed. A 200 yard trajectory of plus or minus 3" will take about 90% of all the deer killed in North America.

This is a copy and paste from a Gun Magazine Article


Ideal Deer Cartridges

By Chuck Hawks