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 Swift on hand, and I did have a .223 WSSM in a Winchester Model 70 Feather Weight. That rifle and those paired cartridges had already chalked up positive history of several goats and whitetail deer.
With antelope being the primary target, and having several doe kid tags to fill, my target weights were at or near 100 pounds. Now I was setting out in northern Harding country South Dakota, with the first in my pair the handloaded Barnes 62-grain bullets. The handload pushed the Barnes TST at 3628 fps behind a burning mass of Varget in a 38.5 grain charge. This load was max for Varget and the Barnes bullet but was able to stay close to the Swift even at its increased grain weight. As an example, the .220 Swift when loaded with a 53-grain Barnes TSX FB bullet leaves the muzzle at a maximum velocity of 3882 if pushed by a 43.5 grain charge of AA 2700. “Yes, a couple of hundred feet faster,” you’re saying – but also a bullet nine grains lighter with less kinetic energy on target after the speed thing begins to dry up a bit down range. In my book it all balances out when comparing very high velocity loads and modest grain weight changes back to back. Speed kills, and with light bullet and small calibers you can’t get them moving fast enough. Even a slight change in grain weight can return major dividends at the target in terms of raw energy, which translates into killing force.
My first goat taken with the .223 WSSM was a young buck within legal kid goat size (horn length). He was angling across a shallow draw and moving directly across me from right to left at a bit under 100 yards. He had just cleared a fence and seemed to be more interested in what was following him than he was in me. Shooting off a set of Bog Pod sticks, I saw my shot hit just behind the shoulder, about mid-body. The antelope reacted much like those whitetail had during the late season doe hunt in that cornfield, and after hunching up a bit, he just trotted over the ridge and out of sight. Moving up the draw quickly so as to get another crack at him, I now observed the animal going up a steep rise right to left. knowing that game in general won’t go uphill when hit hard, I clearly understood that this guy required an additional shot in the vitals. Round two hit him higher, and with the addition of that second bullet he went down hard. Both bullets had exited the back side of the critter, with the first hit taking out a lower section of lung and the second the top of his heart. In this case a shot inside 150 yards maximum (the second shot) had done a good job. Now, however, the question still remained: did the first round make him sick enough to fall to the second hit? I guess we will never know, but a subsequent pair of goats a few weeks later did shed some additional light on the subject.
This whitetail buck can be taken at reasonable range limits, but bullet placement is everything when shooting light rifles.
Glassing a water hole on my friend Randy Routier’s ranch hunting operation at Buffalo, South Dakota, I had been camped out on a ridge top for two days and had been sitting in wait for a good buck to show up with his harem of doe goats. It was well into the first season at this point, and these animals were skittish to say the least. About mid afternoon on the second day of my hunt, 11 goats came walking up a draw and onto the water hole. Seeing no trophy buck in the bunch, I set aside my .25-06, a go-to system for long-range trophy work, and looked down the .223 WSSM at a good-sized (over 100 pounds) goat. The .223 WSSM was loaded with the Barnes 53-grain TSX flatbase at the same velocity as the Swift (3913 f.p.s.) via 40.5 grains of Varget. Aiming again at the point again just behind the left shoulder and a bit high, I caught the doe’s heart and one lung with the Barnes. At the shot my doe just walked off the edge of the stock tank, then proceeded to fall over within about 15 yards. Like the previous .223 WSSM kill, no bullet was recovered. At a range of 125 yards, everything in the bullet department was moving just too fast for the small-frame animal to hold that pill in place.
It should be pointed out at this time that handloading Barnes bullets in a .223 WSSM with a bore twist rate of 1 in 9 inches means keeping the grain weight under that of the tested 62-grain TSX bullet. My rifle, however, while not being known to shoot accurate groups with that heavy bullet, did return game harvesting accuracy. In most cases, it is best to stay with the published game plan for the .223 WSSM in a factory rifle and shoot the 53- to 55-grain or lighter bullets. As a final note, remember: it is always advisable to test on paper extensively before going afield.
Over the course of three hunts I elected to turn to the .223 WSSM, which resulted in two of my own goats, an assist on a third for a friend, and and an additional whitetail. In each case the fast moving .22 caliber got the job done, but not always within easy walking distance from the point at which the animal was first hit by the light bullets.
MORE POWDER AND MORE BULLET
When my partner Mr. Bressler elected to turn to his DPMS .243 on that cornfield hunt and subsequent hunts later in the season, he was eliminating the possible loss of an animal because of underachieving ballistics downrange as applied to lighter bullets and rifles. After spending almost two full years with the .224 caliber bullets in a variety of cartridges that ranged from high velocity to very high speed varmint type separators, I came to the conclusion that when you can use medium calibers that offer state-of-the-art ballistics performance, why even bother with the small stuff? The move to a .25 WSSM, 25-06, and, yes, even the 243 Winchester clearly illustrated a major step forward in performance. In terms of selection, about equal time was split between the .25 WSSM and .25-06 with an industry cull hunt using the 243 Winchester stuck right in the middle. It was a convenient series of hunts, and I managed to get a great deal accomplished in terms of some back-to-back comparisons.
Shooting