Read first. Trust me. You will find this 223/TMK combo does a lot more damage than you think it should. It’s actually a solid option for big game way further than 200 yards. Reading this thread will challenge a lot of your preconceived notions about energy, bullet diameter and mass. It presents a lot of actual results from the field. That is something you rarely find related to ballistics. Most of what we think we know about ballistics is just stuff people have said for decades with no actual data. The final message of this thread isn’t that a 223 is magic. It’s that bullet diameter and mass have less impact on bullet performance than bullet design, and big heavy recoiling cartridges are not needed 99.99% of the time.