Q: I have enjoyed great success on goats and pigs shooting the Speer 70gn bullet in my .22-250, and my dad used his to bag two fallow deer. One was about 100m away and dropped on the spot. The second was taken at 150m and also never moved out of his tracks.
PO Ackley once wrote that a deer hit with the .22-250 will die as if struck by lightning. That’s good enough for me. I’ll use my .22-250 to get my first deer and have complete faith in the cartridge.
Malcolm Reader
A: It is true that deer have been taken with the .22-250 and even less powerful cartridges. It is also true that you can only get quick kills if you place the bullet just right and it doesn’t have to penetrate much flesh or hit any large bones.
But this doesn’t make any of these cartridges a good choice for hunting deer.
The only deer I’ve seen taken with a .22-250 was an absolute fiasco. The Alberta whitetail was hit in snow and the guy ran out of ammo. He had to run it down and cut its throat with a Swiss Army knife.
Admittedly, he used 55gn factory ammo and the 70gn Speer is much better.
Unless it is in the hands of a crack marksman shooting under ideal conditions, the little .22-calibre bullet simply cannot be relied on for a clean kill.
If you are faced with taking a long quartering shot or a rear-end raking shot — or if the deer is running or shielded by foliage — you are more likely to wound the animal than kill it quickly with a .22-250.
Deer hunting is best served with .243 through .30-calibre rounds shooting heavier bullets designed for the game.
While the .22-250 will drop a deer under ideal conditions, there are a lot of better cartridges available for the job. Why not use them?
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