Thread: 223 on deer

Originally Posted by Hunter_Nick

And this is where we need to be acutely aware of our biases (either way). Classic scenario plays out like this:

Hunter shoots a stag with a ‘marginal cartridge’ and it requires a tracking job and a bit of faffing around to retrieve. Hunters mate says- ‘See, I told you (insert name of cartridge) wasn’t powerful enough for deer.

Hunters mate sometime after shoots a deer with his loundenboomer cannon and also requires a tracking job and faffing about to retrieve. Hunters mate says - ‘Man I told you these deer were armour plated!’

Humans are extraordinarily susceptible to confirmation bias. The best way to defeat this is by studying the facts, from breaking the shot through to completion of an autopsy on the animal. As @Tahr shows in many of his posts, if the right .223 bullet gets put in the right place, the job is done.

I did this with a specific bullet from one of my 260s. Swore the bullet off because of performance. After 2 years I looked back at what happened and I couldn’t blame bullet performance. I pulled my shot a few inches too low because I rushed it badly. Bullet hit the humerus bone and penetration lacked to the lower lungs/heart causing a rodeo. I put that buck down quickly with 4 more shots in the ribs as fast as I could from 10 yards away when I caught up to him. He had gone onto the neighbors land and I didn’t want to do any tracking so if it was moving he was getting a bullet until he quit. I’ve since gone back to the bullet and no problems with it because I haven’t shot anything in a bad spot. Funny how that works.