I have killed 6 axis deer with a .222, its the ranch gun at a game ranch I visit. Sometimes when I am over ther visiting the ranch manager, hewill get a wild hair and offer me a deer and I use his .222.4 of those axis were bang flops (2 neck shot, 1head shot) on theother one it was a body shot that hit the spine, bang flop, the other 2 were boiler room shots, tracking these 2 deer was a little scary, no blood trail, but they only went about a 100 yds. In this area its pretty clean terrain so finding them was not toobad. But in say a real brushy condition, like south texas it would have been a nightmare..