ORIGINAL: Todd1700

Almost all lost deer are due to a bad hit. And a bad hit is a bad hit whether you make it with a 243 or a 300 short mag.
I have never seen any scientific study that found a slightly larger hole in the intestines killed deer markedly faster than a slightly smaller one.
Put your shot in the vitals and a 243 will kill a whitetail graveyard dead every time. And if you can't keep your shots from a 243 in the kill zone
then moving up to a harder recoiling caliber probably won't improve that situation. I never lost a deer I shot with a 243.

quote:
and all of the deer (about 1,000 kills) 95% of the deer lost were hit by very small calibre bullets where it didn't go through bone,

Bullet type has far more to do with penetration than caliber size.
I'd trust a 100 grain nosler partition out of a 243 to give me an exit hole and penetrate bone more often than a
130 grain ballistic tip out of a 270.