I was specifically talking about your post:
"It’s baffling to me that anyone would consider it for anything other than taking game in the most illegal and unethical manner possible."
I have seen it used many times in a LEGAL and ETHICAL manner taking game. And all shots were through the chest cavity, none were head shots. Just because your only first hand experience of the subject is intimate knowledge of the habits of poachers, doesn't mean everyone that uses a 22 mag is guilty of a crime.
You are absolutely correct. I should be more open minded. I don’t have first hand knowledge of how effective a .22 Magnum is as a deer cartridge. For all I know, it could provide sufficient penetration and a wide enough wound channel to make clean kills on deer. I’ve never tried it because it is illegal where I hunt. The legality issue, however, also rules out .224 caliber centerfire rifles. So, while I know that a .223, .22-250, .22 ARC, .22 CM, etc., with a good bullet, are more than enough to kill deer, I’ve never done it personally.
I will also admit that I was an extreme skeptic when I first heard of the RokSlide thread about using .224 center fire cartridges for deer. I had the same prejudices against it that I have just shown against .22 Magnum. The only people I knew who used .224 center fire cartridges on deer were poachers. If you care to waste more of your life, you can go dig through my 24HourCampfire posts to see them. But I was eventually convinced by a large body of evidence.
The legality issue is simply a matter of jurisdiction. So, since it is legal in your jurisdiction, I would love to hear more about your experience using .22 Magnum as a deer cartridge. How many deer have you killed with it? What ranges? What sorts of wound channels do you see? What bullets work best? I’ll probably still be skeptical - and I will explain why below - but I will at least hear you out.
I’m also skeptical because I know people who use .22 Magnum, and the now obsolete .25 Stevens long, for wild turkeys. They specifically picked those cartridges because they provide sufficient penetration to reliably kill wild turkeys with body shots, but without excessive meat damage, at further ranges than a .22 LR. But, for all I know, modern .22 magnum bullets that aren’t just a hunk of lead can produce sufficient penetration and wound channels to do the job on deer. So, again, I shouldn’t have been so dismissive of the possibility that it would work.
