Big country, taking your advice, I did my own tests, first one similar to yours, and then I did it right. Have you ever really thought about what you did in your test? You put the target close to the brush that was to deflect it, the thing about deflection is that it works just like a mis-zeroed scope, at a foot, you' d never know the difference, even if your glass was off by 100MOA, they' d all be so close you' d never tell, but at a 100yrds, and you impact over 8ft off, you' ve got to know somethings wrong. I used:

230gr jacketed softies .44mag,

3/4oz 12ga slugs,

400 and 350gr flat soft points and 405 and 500gr all lead round nosed bullets in .45-70,

150gr Win. bali. silvertips, 180win silvertips, 150gr rem core locts, & 150 A-frames in .30-06,

123gr hollo points, 139gr core locts and FMJ 7.62x39mm,

and 55gr speer softies and 52gr match hollows in .22-250
since I had a bunch of " potential brass" and old handloads lying around.

Like I said, I did a test like yours, and got similar results, the big bullets shined, but the .22-250 wasn' t at all marginal, then I did it right, placing my 16" x16" (<--far more leniant than a deer' s vitals!) target at 50, 75, and 100yrds away in typical KS brush (which is rather light in diameter, yet very viney/twiggy/thorny) using either iron sights or 2.5x -4x glasses typical of brushguns, at 100yrds, one of the .22-250' s got through, and that was it. at 50yrds, I got much better results, with the .22-250 and the .30-06 150gr Bali silvers performing the best (.22-250 BY FAR!!). The old stand by .45-70' s and .44mags performed about 50% as well as the .30-06 impacting between 30-45% of the time, and the slug gun impacted on two out of 20 attempts. The experts had it right by my experience, and I never doubted them for a second.

A one tenth degree deflection (incredibly small deflection as compared to what would actually happen) at a foot isn' t much, at 300ft, it' s more than enough to shake things up.