Nomercy448

Personally, any common varmint cartridge is going to be "pelt friendly". The .223rem, .22-250, .220Swift, .204Ruger, .243win, .17Fireball, .22 Hornet, etc etc, as long as you choose a bullet construction appropriate for your game weight, you'll be fine with anything on the list. Arguably, a guy CAN use a .30-06 on 20lb foxes and with the proper bullet construction, still have nice, tiny holes. (been doing it for almost 20yrs).

When you're talking about pelt damage, a lot of things come into play. You can't just look at the powder volume or bullet weight (i.e. you can't just look at the CARTRIDGE) to really determine how much pelt damage you're going to do. Velocity at impact range, game weight, and bullet construction are really major players. A frangible varmint bullet at 800yrds on a 50lb coyote is going to act more like a soft-pointed deer bullet on a 200lb deer at 50yrds. There's a "critical mass" of energy transfer that determines your pelt damage. Essentially if your "temporary cavity" is considerably smaller than your animals body, you'll produce very nice clean entry and exit wounds. If the temporary cavity is considerably LARGER than your animals body, like a JHP on a prairie dog, you get "explosive" results. Here's an example: a friend and I were out shooting P-dogs, me with my AR-15 .223, him with his Winchester SX-AR .308win. My .223rem JHP's were popping them like balloons. His .308win with surplus ball ammo FMJ's was punching a clean hole straight through them. No, FMJ's aren't legal for coyote/fox, but my point is that if you minimize your expansion, you can use whatever cartridge you want and still be "pelt-friendly".

If you want to minimize pelt damage OUT OF THE PELT-FRIENDLY CARTRIDGES, then I'd say the .204, 22hornet, .17fireball, or .223rem would be MY choices if I were starting over. My personal choice, is/was .223rem. Enough bullet weight and range to get me as far as I need and still dump 50lb coyotes, but versatile enough to throttle back on 20lb foxes or bobcats. Then you have the choice, either go with a highly frangible bullet so it disintegrates upon impact (temp cavity is big diameter, but not deep penetration), OR, go with a fairly firm bullet construction so it doesn't expand much through the body (temp cav is small dia, and penetrates clear through). The risk with highly frangible bullets is that if your game is too light, they WILL pop like a balloon, and if they hit say the shoulder bone, they may not offer a clean kill. The risk with firm bullets is that they may not produce enough trauma or impact shock to drop the animal DRT, and if you miss by 2", it doesn't make up for shoddy marksmanship as well as a frangible bullet can.