When I was a kid I had a cousin that used a .223 as his first rifle for deer. He did kill deer with it but he also lost deer too. Many that he did recover required second and third shots to finish. Sometimes they dropped at the shot and sometimes they ran. When they ran it was always a problem. That little .223 almost never exited the deer so blood trails were virtually non-existent. When you are in the pine and briar thicket country of south Alabama a deer that runs just a 100 yards without leaving a good blood trail can seem to disappear. It's that thick in places. We took to calling his rifle the rat gun because thats all we thought it was good for. Thank God he only used it a couple of years.

Not trying to sound like a condescending Know it all but I see absolutely no reason to hunt deer with a .223. And I am not some magnum lover who uses a .416 rigby to shoot deer. In fact I have been a staunch defender of the .243 for deer but I firmly believe that it is the minimum caliber for deer. Compared to a .223 the .243 is a powerhouse and yet there are people who consider the .243 too light. The .223 is light recoiling if thats a worry but if my 9 year old cousin can comfortably shoot a .243 then any grown man should be able to. The effective killing range of a .223 sucks. Inside a 100 yards its still not great on deer but over 100 yards it really becomes a crap shoot.

Tiny bullets like those designed for the .223 do strange things when you accelerate them to very high speeds. Strange things like blowing up on a rib cage instead of penetrating into both lungs. If there is even a chance that a caliber will fail to kill an animal with a well placed shot then why use it? And I am telling you that if you keep using a .223 on deer it's going to wind up breaking your heart. Perhaps on the buck of a lifetime.