So upon recently visiting my Father in law in Arkansas and reading the regs, turns out my son can hunt deer in the state, and it is reasonably priced for non resident. This would be a great opportunity for him next year, as it is still a few years until he will be able to fulfill the Wyoming age requirement of 12. He is already obsessed with hunting and shooting prairie dogs and such, I'm certain he would love it.
He's a pretty small guy for his age, he was born at only 27 weeks and his physical growth has always been a little stunted, though he is incredibly responsible for his age. He handles his cricket .22 safer than most kids 3 or 4 years older than him. But because of his small stature, I think the perfect solution for a deer rifle for him is my Ruger AR-556. With the stock collapsed all the way down, and putting the gun in a hog saddle and him sitting, he can shoot pretty respectably with it, I would allow him to shoot out to about 100 yards on a deer (he has hit prairie dogs at that range), and the recoil is negligible for him. Now my only question is bullet selection....and here are a few of my ideas
Hammer Hunter 64 grain
Sierra Game King 65 grain
Hornady GMX 70 grain
Nosler bonded performance 64 grain
Nosler Partition 60 grain
Do any of you have any experience with any of these bullets on white tail? It has a 1:8 twist, so it will stabilize all of them listed, and it has generally shot pretty good, though for 100 yards, extreme accuracy is not essential. More important is how the bullet will perform terminally on the deer. I personally have killed one small framed 3 point mule deer with the 65 grain SGK at about 150 yards, punched through both shoulders and was under the hide on the off side, and the deer fell where it was standing, but that was only one deer.
Any experience with any of these, or if there are other, better options, would be appreciated. Thanks all.
I haven't used the .223 for deer, but have used a .22-250. Years ago, Pennsylvania used to have a separate season for does, and I had gotten tired of trashing both shoulders of a smallish doe with the .308. So, I loaded up some 64-grain Winchester Power-Point bullets in the .22-250, and over the next few years shot a bunch of does with them. As I recall, they were doing about 3300 fps, and you would probably be getting a bit less than that velocity out of the .223 cartridge. I think that 3000 fps is a reasonable expectation, and I also think that would be plenty.
These bullets worked beautifully on the 100 to 120-pound deer, and all shots exited on mostly broadside lung shots. Exit wounds were all about the size of a dime, and not a single deer took another step after being shot. I didn't shoot any through the shoulders, so I can't say whether or not I would have liked the results. On rib-cage shots, though, I was pleased with the performance. There was no blood-shot meat in the shoulders, which was why I had tried these bullets. You can decide if a half-dozen smallish whitetails is enough to go on, Sir.
I'd also like to throw this thought in there : These bullets probably aren't much different from the Sierra bullets you have already shot deer with, and that one, quite likely, would be every bit as good for your young son's hunt. I don't know how heavy the jacket is on the SGK, but we took one of the Power-Points apart and the jacket was about twice as thick as the jacket on a 50-grain Sierra hollow point bullet that we were using to shoot woodchucks. The other thing we did was to shoot a bunch of woodchucks with the Power-Points, and expansion was minimal. Exit wounds were dimes-sized on eight-pound rodents, just like 100-pound deer.
If I was starting from scratch, I would be leaning toward the all-copper designs for this application, based on my experience with the Hornady GMX in the 30-06 over the last several years. A box of factory loads would be the quickest & handiest way to find out if your AR shoots them well. I've also never heard anything but rave reviews about the Barnes bullets, in cartridges large and small. A buddy of mine had a deer lease in Texas for several years, and he used the .223 to cull does routinely. The deer in his neighborhood are pretty small, but the 53-grain TSX routinely flattened them. It's all he ever used for that purpose, and he loved the terminal performance. I don't know if he ever used the heavier Barnes bullets, or what they load in factory ammo. A short trip to their website ( or a Midway or Cabela's catalog ) would tell the tale on that.
Lastly, you might want to keep checking the little guy from time to time about the eye dominance thing. He's young enough that it may still be changing. When little kids are growing rapidly, everything is changing all the time. His eye dominance may still be in transition as well. He might also be the kid who grows up to be truly ambidextrous, at least a far as rifle shooting goes. Sometimes eye dominance is not really strong, and you may need to patch one eye while shooting. Masking tape on one lens of his glasses works well but it's best if you don't need to do that. Watch him and see which hand he favors for other things he does ( throwing a baseball, swinging a bat, etc.) If he's truly left-handed, which I've been told by doctors is not what determines left- or right-handedness, he will have an easier time shooting off his left shoulder. If he's really cross-dominant, you may have train him to do something that doesn't feel natural to him. The good thing is that you're starting with him really young, when he will go whichever way you train him. Good luck, and remember to post some pictures of the young deer-slayer as soon as you can.
