my rifle scope sight immediately to the far side of the thick cornstalk stand and waited for the old girl to emerge. Show up she did. Now the range had been extended another 50 to 75 yards yards, and I was wishing for my tried and true .25-06 pushing a 117-grain Sierra boattail bullet as loaded by Federal Cartridge. This was my go-to load in most cases on the wide-open western South Dakota prairies, but today I was in a test mode, and as such the .22-250 had gotten the call that cold windy morning.
The .223 round is a military lightweight and not a proven big game cartridge at all.
The S&W M&P-15-T performs well as a coyote rifle, and the author also took deer with it.
Pushing the muzzle of the Savage Predator into the slightly angling high wind that was coming from my left, I reset my sights for added windage and touched off round number two. Again the doe seemed to shudder and shift her weight a bit. However, again she turned away and proceeded to move on down the field in the general direction of the blockers waiting at the other end.
With the doe out of sight and nothing going on in the direction of the blockers, Jerome and I both started to converge on the location at which I had made the second hit on the deer. We were lucky that we had fresh snow and short corn to deal with. In effect, if that deer was hit anywhere close to the vitals, we could stay on her track all day if necessary. With about 100 yards of a zig-zagging trail we located the deer. She was down and stone dead, laying directly between two rows of corn stubble. Two bullets had entered her left side vitals, but no exit wound or blood trail was visible. The small .224 bullets had entered the animal, leaving the hide to close over the entry wound, then causing all the blood given off by one bullet to the liver and a second hit to the lung to pool in the lower portion of the chest cavity.
In effect, the 55-grain softnose bullets were not energy-effective against the 155-pound animal. The ratio of bullet mass to body mass just didn’t compute in this very direct and obvious test scenario. Tom had dropped a pair of adult does in the same field by way of his handloaded 55-grain Ballistic Tip .224 bullets that were turning up about 3200 f.p.s. velocity. Shooting his R-15 by Remington topped by Burris 4.5 X14 glass sights, he had elected to take head/neck shots on the two animals and thereby dropped both in their tracks with the light-caliber rifle. Here was the classic example of bullet placement getting the job done.
Jerome, with his DPMS AR Hunter in .243 Winchester and the 95-grain Winchester boattail, still elected to shoot neck shots on the cornfield at under 150 yards. As Jerome says, when in doubt take the best shot possible regardless of the rifle being put to work. Good advice in any big game harvesting situation! Was the data returned by my two partners valuable? Of course it was, as any kill can be a learning curve of sorts. With accuracy being a given – all the local Dakota hunters I have spent time with afield can shoot for sure – the next element to success is body area placement. Light bullets and small calibers require placement in areas of the body that will result in immediate neurological takedown, versus a more prolonged death caused by blood loss.
About two days after the cornfield hunt I was at home working in my office when my wife Colleen indicated that a wounded buck was walking through our back forty. Glassing the deer I could see a full left hind quarter was just about shot away, or eaten away. As we have big cats here in the northern foothills of western South Dakota’s Black Hills, I was not at all surprised. Getting a call into my local game warden I was given the green light to take the animal down. My weapon of choice in this case was the S&W M&P-15-T that was standing in the hallway with a loaded five-round magazine in the receiver well. (Out here in the wild west it is common practice to keep a rifle in the kitchen.)
The .223 can take deer humanely, given perfect shot placement, but there are better choices for the task.
Heading outside and reaching a large tree trunk, I steadied myself and then touched off a round with the Gem Tech-suppressed quiet gun, and the 36-grain Black Hills brand Barnes Varmint Grenade did the rest of the job. At 170 yards, and with bullet placement at the base of the head/neck, the hurting old buck never knew what hit him. That VG bullet made of dusted or sintered copper coring and a solid copper jacket just turned to a gas inside his head and upper spine area. With a muzzle exit velocity of almost 3700 f.p.s., this little fast mover did the job with both velocity and accuracy.
This fancy dressed AR is a big part of the reason some have lobbied for light rifles in the field. However, at what price in wounded game?
With my partner’s kills and the example I just related to you, am I saying that the .224 or any light bullet is appropriate for taking big game animals the size of deer or even antelope cleanly? Yes – but only if all the conditions regarding bullet placement location, range, and rifle accuracy have been met. In South Dakota we often hunt rolling, open prairie land, flat grain or crop fields, or other areas that allow a good visual and ideal tracking conditions on an animal that takes a hit. Lacking these conditions, the net effect can be a lost animal.
EASTERN STATES AND .22S FOR DEER
While we can and do get away with shooting very light rifles on deer and antelope out here in the wide-open west – again, due for the most part to being able to locate an animal after the shot – I don’t believe the same can be said for areas of the country that contain whitetail in heavy cover. Based on what I have seen and will elaborate on a bit later, I tend to believe that it is asking for trouble to allow a hunter into the woods in, say, Minnesota with a .223 Remington loaded for deer. How can I make that judgment, being a Dakota hunter? Because I spent about 50 years of my life hunting whitetail not just for trophies, but in old-school meat events in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa. Believe me, friends, I know what I am talking about here, and slapping a bullet into a big northern Minnesota swamp buck’s vitals and then tracking him through black willow, swamp bottoms, and heavy buck brush ain’t my idea of a good day at the office. The bottom line here is that you’re going to lose game. Woodland states that enact legislation that allows the use of light cartridges such as the .223 for big game seem to be missing the obvious, and according to some I have discussed this issue with, seem to care less about wounding the critters. I think the .22 as a big game cartridge in these conditions, or for the most part in almost all conditions, is nothing but a careless stunt!
Yes, I have observed a professional hunter with hundreds of kills under his belt take down even trophy whitetail with a .220 Swift and a medium Winchester 55-grain pointed softpoint bullet. However, now we’re getting back to range, bullet placement, and just plain know-how, which in turn moves us into the second phase of this discussion: the suitability of heavy-hitting .22s beyond the .223 Remington or even the .22-250 Remington as big game harvesting tools.
INCREASED FIREPOWER, OBVIOUS RESULTS
Staying with the .224 caliber bullets in weights well below 100 grains, I undertook several hunts at one point in my rather detailed study of the newer Winchester Super Short .223 WSSM. Targets were antelope and deer in combination, with an additional goat hunt in western South Dakota.
Moving to the .223 WSSM gave me the opportunity to experiment with several variables. In addition to increased velocity and energy, different bullet designs were employed in the field, such as a Barnes 62-grain TSX and a 53-grain TSX flatbase, thereby increasing accurate range and retained energy. I could have turned to the new Norma 55-grain soft point ORYX pills loaded in the .220 Swift, which moves at about the same velocity as the .223 WSSM, but I didn’t have a
