Here's my two cents. Can you kill a deer with a 223. Yes. Heck, you can kill one with a 22 rifle. Would I recommend either as a deer caliber? NO! The bullets for these calibers like 223, 222, 22-250 or 220 swift are just too light to be consistently reliable on deer sized game. Most are 55 grs in weight. Accelerate a bullet that light to the velocities some of the cartridges do and weird things can happen when they hit large solid objects. Sometimes they penetrate; sometimes they deflect; and sometimes they explode.

I'm not just talking out of my a$$ here either. When I was a teenager one of my cousins used a 223 calibered mini 14 to hunt deer. To be honest I am not even sure that was legal in Alabama although I believe you can hunt them with any centerfire caliber here. He definately killed some deer with it but he definately lost some too. And several of the ones he did kill required multiple shots to put them down for good. He had a lot of deer run a long ways after the shot as well. Some we found. Some we didn't. And some we found days later after the meat was spoiled. The primary problem was penetration. Even on a perfect broadside shot that little bullet never exited the other side of a single deer he shot and sometimes only pentrated enough to get one lung and not the other. A single lunged deer will usually die but they can run a helluva long ways with one lung intact. And let me tell you, tracking a deer that travels over 400 yards through south Alabama thickets with only a 22 caliber hole in one side of him to bleed from is challenging to say the least. We started calling it the rat gun and thankfully he only used it a few years.

Now don't get me wrong. I am not one of these guys at the other extreme of this debate that thinks you need a 416 Rigby to hunt deer. I currently use a 7mm-08 and have often defended the 243 as a deer caliber on this very forum. I also know that some people say its okay to use the 223 and take close range head shots. Well at the risk of being branded an elitist know it all (which I certainly am not) I do not recommend this practice either. Pull your shot a couple of inches or the deer makes a slight movement with its head at the last second and rather than a dead deer you have a deer with its upper or lower jaw blown off. I know I would hate to go home knowing a deer was out there somewhere doomed to death by slow starvation because I mutilated it in such a fashion.

Besides I just cannot for the life of me understand why someone would need to use a 223 as a deer gun. What advantage does this caliber or any of its 22 caliber cousins have over the 243? Is it significantly more accurate? No. They may be better for bench rest competitions but the difference in a .445 inch group and a 1 inch group at 100 yards doesn't mean doodly squat in the world of deer hunting. Is the recoil that much less? No. 8 year old kids shoot the 243 from small lightweight youth model rifles with no recoil related problems. If the recoil of a 243 is too much for you then it might be time to consider bass fishing. Are bullets for the 243 hard to come by? No. In fact it is one of the most popular in the nation and there are many to choose from whether you are after whitetails or varmits. Even with a 243 I recommend sticking with a 100 gr bullet and being careful with your shot selection. As far as I am concerned it is the minimum caliber for whitetails