You can kill any deer built with a 22 rimfire or a sharp stick, the trick is to be effective with your method. A 222 will kill a whitetail quite effectively, but don't expect an exit wound. A gut shot will probably be a lost deer. There will be very little blood to track with. A shot on the point of the shoulder that has to go through bone might not be as effective as you would like. Light bullet construction means you will have to shoot appropriotly.

All that being said, shoot the 222 like you were shooting a bow, right behind the shoulder he will die, now you will have to make the call of can you find him or not. Same with 223.

My theory is shoot the biggest gun available, that you can shoot comfortably. Too dead has never been a problem for me, but not dead enough has. The reason that some states do not allow smaller calibers is the simple fact that many people are not responsible enough to pick there shot and game is wasted when they wound and loose the animal.

The question is not will the 222 kill a deer cleanly, but do you feel comfortable going the extra mile to make it happen.

Really? Care to back that up?

Here are ballistics for Winchester's factory loads:

Now, please explain for me how I am underestimating the .222 when I say that the 1006 ft. lbs of energy of the .223 at 100 yards is about as potent as the 1094 ft. lbs of energy of the .222 at the muzzle. Keep in mind that a generally accepted rule of thumb for deer rifles is that they have a minimum of 1000 ft. lbs of energy at impact.

Sounds to me like the biased opinion of someone trying to justify his purchase of a .222...

Thats what most people say is acceptable but i feel that 1500 ft. lbs of energy is a safer number to use. Im not saying that 1000 ft. lbs wont kill deer, a 22lr will kill a deer with the right shot and it has nowhere near 1000 ft. lbs of enerygbut i just stick with 1500 and i know im going to drop the deer quickly.

To be honest, I didn’t do my homework. I saw approx. 200 f.p.s. difference between the 2 in my reloading manual and I just couldn’t see it. I’m going to check into it some more. I will admit I have a 222, but I would never use a 222 or 223 for deer hunting. I have rifles chambered in cartridges better suited for that...

I purchased my 222 for my use and I don’t have to justify anything...[8D]

Two main differences-all the .222's I've seen had 1/14" twists, which means that ypor deer bullet selection is limited to bullets no longer than a 55-grain flatbase. The longer ones won't stabilize. Same is true of the older commercial .223's which generally have a tist of 1/14" or 1/12". If you have a .223 with a 1/9" or faster tist, you canuse the 60-grain Nosler Partition of the 64-grain Winchester, bot of which are tought enough for deer shooting. In addition, the .223 has about a 100-FPS advantage over the 222 in muzzle velocity with any bullet you load it with.

This "foot-pound" business is basically BS. It is NOT how many foot-pounds a bullet carries, but how that energy is applied to the animal that determines whether the varmint is gonna bite the dust. I would much rather hit an elk, for example,with a .58-caliber round ball at 1200 ft/sec or more than any 17-caliber bullet, even if the .17 is showing higher Ft/Lb numbers......

I'd like to remind everyone that the Inuit hunters in Alaska, anyway, used to kill their polar bears with the .22 Hornet. Most of them have now up-gunned to the .223!

That's why it's a "rule of thumb"... more of a guideline, really... (to quote Capt. Jack Sparrow...) I'm not sure it's even possible to propel a .17 bullet fast enough to have more energy than a .58 caliber round ball at 1200 fps. (By the way... the "guideline" for elk is 1500 ft lbs...) I understand that penetration is one of the more important aspects, and can be affected by bullet construction, bullet weight, etc., but, if you start with the "guideline" it'll put you into a generally effective realm of cartridges.

JMO

But I hunt in Pennsylvania and I know of people that did hunt at one time with a .222 Remington because their kids were small and couldn't handle the recoil of a larger firearm.

Did it make it right? NO

Was it any good for hunting white tails where I live? NO

Why did they do it? Probably because they were too cheap to go out and spend the money for a first gun for a kid that in a couple of years they would out grow and then it would just sit in the gun cabinet or get pawned off on some one else.

I will agree with anyone that says that you shouldn't use anything smaller than a .243 Winchester and go one step further to say that a .243 shouldn't be used as a kids gun because you have to be selective in where you shoot to make a ethical shot on a large whitetail deer.

JMO, but, it seems to me that if you've got a kid shooting, he's going to be a lot more likely to flinch and gut shoot a deer with a .30-06 than he will with a .243. The last part of your sentence implies that you don't have to be selective where you shoot to make an ethical shot if you are using a larger caliber. That's just not the case. Shot placement is important regardless of caliber, and I'd rather have my son focusing on where he's placing the bullet than worrying about the recoil of a larger caliber, and yanking the trigger with his eyes closed... If you put a .243 through the deer's lungs because you've been practicing and can hit where you aim, you're going to have a lot deader deer than if you gut shoot him with a .300 RUM because you're afraid of the recoil...

The .243 seems to work fine for him.

In that picture, is that an exit wound visible behind the foreleg? That's a helluva hole from a .243.

That gets my vote!

I also have to say i love the .222 Rem. cartridge... I have a 12ga. .222 combogun that i've harvested a ton of meat with, but to me a wolf is the biggest thing i'd shoot with a .222... (or .223 for that matter)

I've also had other .222's including bench rest rifles that were amazing accurate!

DM