I used a 222 for my first deer rifle and the biggest whitetail I have to date fell to that caliber. Lost a few deer too!

The flaw in your logic is that the total weight of the animal in question has little to do with how much force it takes to bring it down. The thickness of the hide, muscle, rib bones, shoulder bones, overall anatomy, etc controls what it takes to make a clean kill.

As anyone that has used a 222/223 for deer hunting will tell you: it is an adequate caliber for limited range and perfect double lung heart shots. It is inadquate or marginal in most of our hands. It is certainly inadquate for me.