Thread: The ‘controversial.222’

I'd always been tickled by the idea of hunting deer with a .223 when I first bumped into a fella who did and not long after I bought one and never looked back.

Of all the calibres I've owned and used on deer the .223 has shot more deer mostly sika and a few fallow than any other calibre.

Most of the shots on Sika including my biggest sika stags were chest shot and they were bang flops apart from three deer which ran and dropped within 50 yards which later I found out was due to a batch of ammo I had accidentally downloaded so instead of the usual 26 gr AR2206H behind a 55 gr projectile I had dumped in 24 gr of powder.

Back to 26 grains of powder and it was bang flops again often with projectiles being recovered on the far side under the skin on sika chest shots.



I love the .223 suppressed as I find it more quiet but later bought a Sako A1 .222 which was also used on Sika but I used 50 gr Hornady SP's.



I've only shot 4-5 sika with a .222 but also found it did the job nicely but I found the .223 just a tad more powerful but I guess that's splitting hairs.

A few years back I was out on a mates place with the kids hunting Fallow when my oldest at the time who was around 10-11 years shot the below fallow buck at 225 mtrs with a nice heart shot with the .223

I showed my mate the deformed head and he said it was a buck he shot some months back in the head with a .222 where it dropped, got up and ran off where he followed the blood and lost the animal, he even used the dog and looked for that animal over three days to no avail.

The little tribly projectile just bounced off that skull but would have caused one hell of a headache!



The .222 is the smallest calibre we can legally take hunting into DOC land where as in other countries the .222 is not permitted for hunting. I know back in Austria where I've hunted the .222 is banned even though it would be ideal for Roe deer!