Thread: 223 on deer

Originally Posted by TLB

There are alot of different opinions on that one and could be a whole thread on it's own, probably is already at least one haha.

A .223 is not a long range deer rifle no matter the barrel length. My idea of a .223 is for it to be lightweight, accurate and versatile otherwise I might as well take something with a bit more grunt. So mine sits at 15" and I wouldn't hesitate to shoot a deer in the right conditions at 300 yards. Projectile choice does come into it though, that would be with 75gr eldm or 77gr tmks.
For varmint shooting you can still load up lighter weight projectiles going quickly.
Plenty of the professional deer and goat cullers run theirs at 12" to 14" and they shoot more animals than most.

Do you know what velocity you are getting with the 77TMKs from the 15" barrel?

Originally Posted by Shearer

Do you know what velocity you are getting with the 77TMKs from the 15" barrel?

I haven't chronographed the 77gr but the 75gr eldm are doing about 2500fps. So pretty slow! I haven't tried any form of load development however.
The 75gr has about 650+ f/lbs energy at 300 yards doing that velocity.
A 55gr sp doing 3200 fps out of a full length barrel has about 550 f/lbs of energy and doesn't cause as much damage.
So at 300 yards drop aside, the 75gr eld out of a 15" barrel beats a 55gr out of a 22". That's why I personally believe that projectile selection is often as important if not more so than barrel length.