mini 14 vs. white tailed deer
 

Hi i'm new at this forum and live in Peru. I'm possibly buying a ruger mini 14 ranch rifle and this july im going to northern peru to hunt white tailed deer ant a dry forest i'm wonderring if i could kill a deer with a .223 bullet from my mini 14?

You sure can, it is a little lite for me but poachers seem to take a few every year with .22. Shot placement is the key, practice, and check the law to make sure it is legal, Doc

Pick the right bullet..Do not buy a varmint bullet/fragmenting type bullet. Federal 60gr nosler partitions, Winchester 64gr power point or Remington 55gr pointed soft point (psp) are all good deer bullets..and like doc said,shot placement and knowing your rifles range limitations..

This is "Shot Placement"



Brush some info on the rifle? Doc

Yes, you can. I have in the past, but if are asking if there are better deer rifles out there, yes there are. I usually start with a 243 and 100 gr bullets as the light end of deer rifles. Sure you can kill one with less, but everything has to be just right. If I were shooting a 55 gr bullet, the 25-06 would be the choice.

CVA kodiak 50cal topped off with a leupold 2-7x33 shooting 2 50gr (100grs) of triple 7 pushing 1 350gr hornady FPB bullet..

If you don't already have the rifle, why don't you upgrade the caliber from a borderline/light size to a larger/more appropriate caliber? Maybe a .270, 7mm-08, .243 or something else.

I am not sure what the gun laws are like in Peru, but I would recommend a Ruger Mini 30 instead of a Mini 14. It fires a 7.62x39 bullet, which would be better for deer than the .223 of the Mini 14.

There are dozens of good rifles in better calibers for deer hunting. Have you considered a bolt action rifle? I would recommend .243, .270, or .308 over a .223 or 7.62x39. If you insist on having a semi-auto, Saiga makes a good .308 semi-auto which I have heard is very accurate, and here in America sells for about the same price as a Mini 14.

With all that being said, you can get the job done with .223 if you know what you are doing. There is just a lot less room for error.

Or even a Mini 14/30 in 6.8 SPC...

A 7mm-08 or .270 isn't necessary for a Peruvian Whitetail deer. LOL!

Your use of the .223 will work just fine for those monster whitetails you have there in Peru. Won't mention a thing about proper bullet placement as I believe that will be covered extensively in the posts!

Good luck,

iSnipe