There is no way to judge the value of a cartridge/firearm based on the distance deer run after being shot. Just for example... a deer shot in the guts with a 338 Rem Ultra Mag will run a heck of a lot further than a deer that's shot through the heart and both lungs with a .243 Winchester. The 338 RUM is massively more powerful, but in the above situation will kill a deer much slower than the 243. At the same time, two deer shot through the boiler room with the above rounds might exhibit totally different reactions, with the 338 not always being the faster kill. There are too many variables that just cannot be accounted for. My dad brought home the heart of a deer that had hole clean through it from a 20 gauge Remington Slugger. The deer ran almost 100 yards by his account before going down. The fact that the deer had already been shot at moments before and was already on an adrenaline-pumped run when shot probably had something to do with the fact that it ran that far while clinically dead. The point is that there is no doubt that a 20 gauge Foster-style slug is extremely lethal to deer when shot well, but some deer refuse to heed the "common wisdom" of gun counter sages and magazine writers and drop stone cold dead at the shot, no matter what they might have been shot with.

Here's my take: 1) A well placed shot with a smaller/less powerful round is far better than a crappy shot from an extremely powerful one. 2) Deer die on their own schedule no matter what they are shot with, with some exhibiting almost supernatural feats of athleticism after suffering a wound that ought to be, by conventional wisdom, instantly fatal.

Mike