James B

Good shot placement is the same for any caliber. Larger calibers or should I say heavier bullets will penetrate and or break bigger bones to get to the vitals. Some shot angles take more penetration which also comes down to sectional density and bullet construction. High velocity while it has its good points also makes bullets expand more thus sometimes reducing penetration. Having shot deer and other big game animals with a wide varity of calibers, I have come to prefer moderate weight bullets at medium velocities for deer hunting. The 6.5x55, 308, 7MM-08 are good examples of my choices for deer. I like the 270 lloaded to about 2700-2800 fps with 130 grain bullets. The 30-06 loaded to about the same velocity. I had pretty good luck with the 243 and 6MM Remington with Nosler Partitions and Hornady 100 grain Round nose bullets. Some of the early 243 bullets either shot pinholes through deer with no expansion or were to fragil and would blow up on shoulders and even ribs. There have been improvments in bullets since I first tried the 243 which was when it first came out. To me there are just to many better calibers for big game.