And yes, if it kills people efficiently, it will certainly take deer.
i call BS i've shot deer with a 223 and if you shoot them behind the shoulder they will run a long way. now i've seen people shot in shoulders, neck, gut and all other places and they all fall in their tracks. it takes a lot less energy to kill a person thenit does a deer.
but that being said , yes i think a 763X39 will kill a deer just fine. use the right bullets and don't take em out too far and you'll be just fine
I've shot deer with the .223, .243, .250 Savage, .270, 7-30 Waters, .280, .30-30, .308, .30-'06, .300 Weatherby Mag, and the .303 British.
I've also shot them with .357 Magnum at distances up to 70 paces and all three were DRT.
I've shot them with .44 Percussion Revolvers, too. Both were one-shot kills at over 25 paces.
I've shot them with a .495 patched round ball from my .50 Lyman GPR, too.
Of these, I've killed more deer with the .223 than anything -over twenty five.
In my 32 years of deer hunting, I've come to believe that the often-mentioned "1,000 ft/lbs requirement" for killing deer is pretty meaningless. What matters more is using a bullet or ball made for the purpose and putting it where it need to go.
I say this with confidence because the only deer that I've ever had to shoot more than once happened to be the only deer I ever killed with a .300 Wby. It was a perfect broadside shot. It was a mighty long poke for me at 275 paces, but nothing that one of the world's most powerful .30 caliber rounds shouldn't have easily handled. I hit it once. It didn't move. I hit it again. It didn't move. The third shot broke both shoulders and that dropped it.
The first two shots made neat little .308" entry and exit wounds, doing very little damage to tissue in between them in spite of bringing a whole lot more than 1,000 ft pounds of energy to the target. I don't think the deer even knew what hit it -or that it had been hit with anything, for that matter.
In the darkness of the pre-dawn, I stuffed my ammo carrier and the chamber of the rifle (Ruger No.1) with ammo intended for range work that I'd loaded with 220 grain MatchKings. They might have brought more than 1,000 ft pounds to bear, but they didn't deposit much of it into the target.
Based on that one less than stellar experience, I could say that the .300 Wby is an inadequate round. Of course, we all know that isn't the case.
But it is the case when the wrong bullet is used and it isn't put in exactly the right spot. So it is with the .223, as well. So it is with everything in between.
I'd obviously rather use the .223 than the 7.62 X 39 because that is what I use, but that said, if a 7.62 X 39 was what I had, I wouldn't hesitate to fill my freezer through using it. There is no doubt in my mind that it will get the job done.
-JP
