.223 effective for humans but not deer

ben hunchak said:
In either case, it won't fill the freezer, wounding is desireable in a military weapon, not in a sporting arm.
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Sure it will. I know a few people that have filled the freezer with a .22 Savage Hi-power. If you shoot them in the right place, they jump right int he freezer like it is a hot tub party.

That being said, I'd rather use a .257 Roberts or such.
 
please enlighten me, i do no understand how a round acceptable for humans is inadequate for deer.
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Do you have any concept of how military cartridges are chosen?Do you realize that it takes more resources to care for a wounded soldier than to deal with a dead body?
 
quackquackbang said:
Read the Flat Top story by Bartell it will anwaser all your questions!!!:cool:
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That story has two messages one of which a newbie may fail to notice.

The first is that a .22 calibre centrefire loaded with a properly designed big-game bullet will kill a deer.

The second is that in order for the first to work the shooter has to be a hunter not prone to buck-fever, have great shooting skills on animals under field conditions, and must have the patience to wait for the perfect presentation.
 
Use a good bullet lik a TSX or a Partition and the 223 is a deer killing machine. Choose your shots carefully, of course.:)

I killed a black bear with my 223 last year, at 175 yards. No reason it wouldn't kill a deer, too.
 
One time in the bush area of farmland Sask, my brother and another fellow were driving on a trail, when there was a big whittail buck, about fifty yards away. Their only rifle was bros 22 and his ammunition was shorts.The fellow with him, who was a very experienced and good hunter, urged bro to shoot. Hit him in the ribs and it will kill him, he said. There was some snow on the ground and the felow said they could go the mile home and get the 30-30 and track him, if the 22 only wounded it.
My brother popped a short into his ribs and the buck barely flinched. It stood there while bro shot six or seven shorts into him. Then he wobbled and fell over, dead.
I helped butcher the deer. The bullets that hit a rib on the way in just stopped in the rib. But two or three were lethal, going between the ribs and penetrating the lungs, before stopping on the far rib cage.
Now please, don't anyone say that I just said a 22 with shorts was adequate for shooting deer!
 
todbartell said:
first off, have you ever shot a deer? or a human?





http://www.canadiangunnutz.com/forum/showthread.php?t=278294
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i shot my first deer this year. i used a crossbow at 40yds. i entered breaking front leg bone in half, and exited slicing the shoulder blade on the other side. both legs dropped right out from under it and it plowed forward 10 yards and somersaulted... dead in 5 seconds as i'd not only double lunged him but nicked the heart too, haven't shot a human before but the body mass is roughly the same so i figure it would have the same effect:kickInTheNuts:
i guess what i'm trying to figure out is how a .223 is not going to cause as much damage as a crossbow although i do feel my crossbow is defineatly a formidable weapon for deer
 
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A .223 will kill a deer, usually, eventually. But that's not how we hunt. If you are in need of food and have nothing else, you'd shoot it with .22shorts as in H4831's example or snare it or club it if you could. But for "sport" hunting, we are trying to get a humanely quick kill with one shot to the vitals, so hunting regulations tend to require a more potent cartridge that increases the chance of that effect.

As a former professional soldier, I really don't believe that my predecessors who once upon a time had to choose a new cartridge, chose the 5.56mm NATO for the reason that we would wound the enemy rather than kill them, calculating that it would take more resources to extricate the wounded and care for them. I am sure they were aware of that idea, and didn't think it was entirely worthless, but the primary goal of having an individual soldier shoot an individual enemy combatant is to take that individual enemy out of combat, whether wounded or dead. (We teach our own that to help our wounded we must win the fight, so we don't rely on the enemy to stop fighting immediately to care for his wounded. By the time he diverts the extra resources to care for his wounded it doesn't help us if we are already defeated.) The secondary objective is to at least disrupt the enemy's activity, by making him take cover.

There is always a compromise. Although a bigger bullet with more energy would be more effective if it hits, the 5.56mm offsets that advantage of larger cartridges in more than one way. Being smaller and lighter, the individual can carry significantly more ammunition and the logistics system can supply him with more ammunition, which means more opportunities to shoot the enemy or at least keep making them take cover so that they can't shoot you or maneuver. And compared to previously used larger cartridges, it is easier for most people to shoot accurately (wounding an enemy is certainly better than missing him, even if it doesn't divert other enemies to care for him) with the lighter weapons and lower recoil that is possible with the 5.56mm cartridge , so that also increases the opportunities to put enemy combatants out of combat, whether by killing or by wounding them.

So the 5.56mm is believed to be effective on humans because it can achieve these things - rather different from what we would want it to do to a deer.
 
What's the matter, didn't get the answers you were wanting in this thread, so you started a new one? :D


Serously though, why choose the .223(if even legal due to hunting regs) when better options are available? If you are in a pinch sure, but you seem to be thinking about buying a gun so why not choose something better than the .223
 
for hunting deer, winchester has the .223 powerpoint listed in that category for deer.
for the twolegged species ,well, 193 ball is designed and used under the geneva convention. when the projectile hits,it tumbles causing tissue damage. two totally different rounds, one mushrooms, one tumbles.
 
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