.223 for bear, mountain goat, deer, elk, and moose.

[SteveAndTheCrigBoys]

My 1-8 .223 makes round holes with 88’s
Current DA is -71’ where I live.


View attachment 787429

Why is it showing a 1.13" group at 100 yards as 0.31 MOA?

 

[MEdude]

Don’t know.
+1” was the group size at 100 yards. Not sure what the .31 MOA is about.
My reason for posting was to show round hole, not slots.
Just informational

 

[mt terry d]

326 yards. 223 Tikka 18" 77 TMK @ 2,234 impact velocity

Made a poor shot. Hit ahead of the shoulder. Couldn't get prone. Was in a bit of an awkward position with the sticks but this bullet gives me a great margin for error ( )
so I sent it.

He was bedded broadside. I did not see impact but was back on him in probably a couple seconds most. Still bedded, hadn't moved except now his head was down. I stayed on him and he tossed his head now and then but nothing else moved. I kept him in the scope for a good 5 minutes or more, suspecting the spine was either hit or shocked. I kept an eye on him as I approached and every now and then he'd flop his head a little then lay still. When I got up to him I just poked his jugular and he bled out with no fuss.

There were a bunch of small bone pieces busted up, some bone gravel ( for lack of a better term) in the hole. The bullet did not pass through. In fact I'm not sure it actually severed the spinal cord. I cut apart the vertebrae thinking I'd find the rest of the bullet but the picture shows all I found.

The second picture has the empty case at the entrance hole.
The third shows the entry damage
The fourth I have my finger touching the spinal column. I think that's where it ended.
It made about a 1 1/2" hole to that point.
The fifth is what I could find. The large piece is actually very thin, like a leaf.
The first picture makes him look much bigger than he actually is; that's why I added it

Big thanks to Form, PNWGATOR and Shoot2HuntU without whose patient instruction I probably wouldn't have made the shot.

 

[teamsprock]

Broadside shot at 175 yards. 16” tikka rough tech shooting 73gr Eldm. Buck ran roughly 40 yards with blood pouring out of his mouth. Lungs were soup. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary until we quartered him.

Photo has the quarter removed, and this shows the entrance. Roughly a 3-4 inch entrance hole. Bullet must have hit the rib and expanded very quickly. Pretty wild, only my second animal with a 223.

The other kill we have was 275 yards, the deers heart and lungs were destroyed, the entrance wound was very small.

 

[Lawnboi]

Broadside shot at 175 yards. 16” tikka rough tech shooting 73gr Eldm. Buck ran roughly 40 yards with blood pouring out of his mouth. Lungs were soup. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary until we quartered him.

Photo has the quarter removed, and this shows the entrance. Roughly a 3-4 inch entrance hole. Bullet must have hit the rib and expanded very quickly. Pretty wild, only my second animal with a 223.

The other kill we have was 275 yards, the deers heart and lungs were destroyed, the entrance wound was very small.

View attachment 787794

Can’t speak to the 73 but this is my favorite part of the 77tmk. Not uncommon to see it start to upset before it makes it through the ribs.

 

[Dave Thomas]

Shot my first deer with a 223 this morning. Don't have pictures of the wound channel because it is warm and I wanted to get it cleaned and cooled as quick as possible. It was a 10 point whitetail that weighed 154 pounds. It ran about 50 yards. Lungs were destroyed and most of the insides were liquefied. The 77 tmk did more damage to the internal organs than the 175 berger elite hunter out of my 7 saum that I Shot 2 does with earlier this season. All shots were about 100 yards and were complete pass thrus.

 

[mt terry d]

Adding to my post # 9183

( sorry about the orientation of the pictures )

1) wound channel to spine
2) view from rear through where spinal cord runs. Pic rotated 90 degrees right
3)View from above. Deer facing right
4)Left (entry) side Pencil pointing towards head Pic rotated 90 degrees right
5) Right side. Pencil pointing towards butt. Pic rotated 90 degrees right

It's my belief that either bone fragments or bullet fragments damaged the spinal cord.

 

[gbflyer]

Adding to my post # 9183

( sorry about the orientation of the pictures )

1) wound channel to spine
2) view from rear through where spinal cord runs. Pic rotated 90 degrees right
3)View from above. Deer facing right
4)Left (entry) side Pencil pointing towards head Pic rotated 90 degrees right
5) Right side. Pencil pointing towards butt. Pic rotated 90 degrees right

It's my belief that either bone fragments or bullet fragments damaged the spinal cord.

That is a cool reconstruction. Thanks for sharing it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Elk botherer]

I’ve witnessed 6 deer taken over the last few years by my kids and friend’s kids with the .223 77 tmk/73 eldm combos and the terminal damage I’ve seen is on par with my 7mm rem mag with 160 gr accubonds. I’ve gained enough confidence in this setup I made my Tikka .223/77 tmk combo my primary weapon system for my deer hunt. I found a decent buck at 228 yards and he was quartering away and about to drop out of sight so I quickly rushed my shot as he was about to disappear. I neglected to compensate for the strong crosswind in my rush and the bullet impacted a couple of inches farther back resulting in a gut shot. The bullet took out the front of the gut, went into the liver and part of a lung. I finished him off with a shot behind the shoulder. That little bullet did a lot of damage and stomach contents were everywhere in the body cavity. When I was cleaning up the skull there was stomach contents in his wind pipe, nasal cavity, and mouth. The buck didn’t make it 30 yards from the initial shot. I was solo, long ways from the truck, and it was late in the day so I was in a hurry to get him quartered up and neglected to take any necropsy pics. My bad because the destruction was impressive.

 

[Elk botherer]

Second data point: nephew’s two point buck at 309 yards with a Ruger ranch .223/73 eldm. Bullet hit a rib behind the shoulder, took out the top of the heart and lungs, punched through the off shoulder’s scapular ridge with the jacket and some fragments against the offside hide. The buck took a few steps and started rolling down the hill. Not many necropsy pics due to distance from the trailhead late at night with two kids on a steep slope with numb hands. Pic is of offside ribs with shoulder removed.

 

[Elk botherer]

Third data point this fall: my 11 year old’s cow elk at 226 yards with Ruger gen2 .223/77 tmk combo. Bullet impact was a little forward and shattered the bottom of the scapula right above the knuckle joint with the humerus. Front of lungs were destroyed and bullet fragments were in the off shoulder, none made it to the hide on the other side. Cow went 50 yards after impact. Couldn’t have hit the shoulder any worse than where he hit it and still killed it to death.

 

[Elk botherer]

Fourth data point: My boy can shoot. When he was 10 I started him off with a 7mm/08 with 120 gr reduced loads with h4895 for big game and he said it was great with no recoil issues. After a few rounds I figured I’d see how he handled a full load with 140 gr bullets and while I noticed it rocked him a little, he claimed it didn’t bother him at all. I had him shoot a few more and progressively his shooting got worse with his groups opening up big time so I called it a day for shooting. We shot the next day and he hit a 2x2 target only once in four shots. I pretended to put a round in the chamber for him but left it empty and sure enough, he flinched like no other. My daughter had the exact same issue when she was my son’s age, but unlike his sister, my boy lives for hunting and shooting. I thought he could handle it better but I was wrong. I switched his setup for my .223 tikka and he started to hit paper but the groups were still below his capability. I put another dummy round in and sure enough, the flinch was still there. We did a lot of dry fires until he had a decent trigger break and eventually his range of confidence stretched out to 200 yards. He harvested a doe at 48 yards that fall with the .223 and it was one shot and the deer hit the ground where it stood. Fast forward to this year and between steel and rockchucks, his range of confidence is well beyond 400 yards now. Once again, the .223 77 tmk combo for the save. Its not a marginal round and it works. Great solution for the recoil sensitive shooter and an even better solution for people that can’t afford to practice with their large center fire cartridges. Our shooting volume due to low cost and ability to have longer shooting sessions due to low recoil has equaled great success. My boy has a doe tag opening up next week so we have one more data point to go. Thanks for this thread PNWGATOR and Form. I owe you guys.

 

[mt terry d]

Grandma did her part this morning.
The ol' RSS strikes again.
60 yards. Impact velocity @ 2675
Walking broadside. Did the typical 'buck and kick' at impact, ran
about 10 yards then dropped. Pass through No blood trail. Just a big puddle
of bloody stuff out his mouth where he laid.

Missed ribs going in, missed ribs on exit.

1) Bambi. RIP
2) Entrance hole lower right side of pic, between 3rd & 4th rib from bottom
3) A fragment of the bullet caught the bottom/end of the heart
4) massively messed up lungs

 

[Robobiss]

Another data point, results are not surprising after the hundreds of photos but, holy crap Batman. This was nasty,

Decent 8 point for my area, dressed weight was 175 pounds. Rifle is a t3x lite with a 16” factory barrel, AB A-10 .30 cal suppressor, Trijicon Huron in UM Tikka rings.

Shooting 77TMK handloads. Not sure on velocity as I have not chrono’d, but the bullets are seated over 23 grains of TAC. I’m thinking MV is somewhere around 2600-2650 with my short barrel, but who knows. Got the rifle pretty recently to try this year after reading the thread a few times and haven’t had time to really play with a load and make them go fast.

Buck was shot at less than 10 yards, so despite my likely slow MV, this is a pretty high velocity impact all things considered, on a pretty good sized buck. Shot entered behind the onside shoulder and ended up in the offside shoulder. No exit. Buck went 15 yards and tipped over.



Onside wound after peeling a couple of layers back. Easily golf ball sized, if not larger. Hit a rib on the way in.



The wound leaving the body cavity on the offside is a little bit smaller, but impressive nonetheless (no pictures).



Ended up taking a screenshot of the original photo of the offside shoulder to get the file small enough to upload. The shoulder is SMASHED. To the point that when I was skinning and quartering an hour ago I said “dang, I think this buck was hit by a car”. And then I saw a lot of clotting and said “oh wow, someone else shot this buck and he lived”

And THEN I found a piece of a copper jacket that had the little itty bitty piece of the very bottom of the little .22 boat tail. Nope, nobody else shot him, it was all from my bullet. The damage it did to the offside after traveling through 12” of deer and throwing fragments everywhere was astonishing. Also note that I found a ton of bone fragments in front of the diaphragm when I was gutting, to me it was an abnormal amount. There was a ton of destruction especially to bones a lot of that offside shoulder is junk.

I’m mostly a bowhunter, and bring the rifle out to “bat cleanup” and use it as a meat tool, but this is on par, if not worse than any deer I’ve shot with a .30 cal. Impressive to say the least.

 

[Dust Rider]

Took my first Pronghorn with the Tikka .223 and Black Hills factory 77 gr. TMK
500 yards off tripod. Did almost no damage visually, but big puddle of blood in the cavity like so many others. There were a few small holes in the lungs and heart. This is my kids compact stock .223. It has killed 2 deer and 3 Antelope to date. I like this outfit so much I ordered another T3X stainless lite and its getting chopped and threaded this week.

 

[Matt5266]

Took my first Pronghorn with the Tikka .223 and Black Hills factory 77 gr. TMK
500 yards off tripod. Did almost no damage visually, but big puddle of blood in the cavity like so many others. There were a few small holes in the lungs and heart. This is my kids compact stock .223. It has killed 2 deer and 3 Antelope to date. I like this outfit so much I ordered another T3X stainless lite and its getting chopped and threaded this week. View attachment 789109
View attachment 789098

Awesome. Out of curiosity how far did he make it after the shot?

 

[Dust Rider]

Awesome. Out of curiosity how far did he make it after the shot?

He took a few steps, maybe 5 yards and lied down. No running, no jumping, no burst of speed. I was ready to shoot again but he just went down and stayed down.

 

[ztc92]

I know killing deer with the .233 and 77 TMK is old news by now but I’m glad I get to contribute once again.

Small whitetail yearling buck.
110 yards, quartering away.
Rockslide special - Tikka 223 with 77 TMK, SWFA 6x and suppressor.

Shot was about 3” behind the shoulder, blew up 2 ribs, then hit diaphragm, turned liver to hamburger and went on to destroy onside lung with small wound in offside lung. Bullet found on outer edge of lung pushed up against a rib on far side of chest. Chest cavity still had at least 2 gallons of blood in it after removing all the organs and guts.

Most impressive thing to me was watching the deer hunch at the shot in the scope and feeling complete confidence I hit him and made a good shot. Reloaded and followed him in the scope for a 30 yard death run and watched him tumble. I’ve only shot a couple animals suppressed and this was the first time I recall hearing a hollow “thunk” at the shot, which I assume was the bullet striking the deers chest and causing it to resonate like a drum.

We live in a 6mm minimum state for elk and I had planned to build a 6CM for next fall but the ease of shooting the 223 has me thinking I may build a 6ARC instead to ensure I have as little recoil as possible.

 

[Heat]

Did Black Hills quit making 77 TMK or is it just gone everywhere due to the popularity of this thread? I don't reload or know anyone that does.

 

[mxgsfmdpx]

Did Black Hills quit making 77 TMK or is it just gone everywhere due to the popularity of this thread? I don't reload or know anyone that does.

It’s often out of stock everywhere.