Looking for ideas on a compact deer rifle

[goalie]

6.5 Grendel absolutely has the “oomph”. My last 5 or 6 deer have been killed with one. The farthest any of them went was 35 yards. The rest died within feet. All with ELD-Ms out of 10.5 or 16” barrels.

I’d recommend a 12” complete upper from PSA with a pistol brace lower and upgraded trigger. I had to change my barrel to 10.5” to comply with a change in state regs for alternative methods season, but before that, my 12” PSA build could shoot 1 MOA groups from a bench.

We built with the PSA barrel/bolt combo for $200. It's a hammer on deer. Longest so far is 51 yards though, we're in woods.

 

[Chris in TN]

Big slow bullets just suck at killing stuff. They make a hole not a soup. I prefer to make soup.

I've probably - by legal necessity - shot 1/3 of the deer I've killed in my life, with muzzleloaders and various other over-.35 bullets. It's incredibly rare for a muzzleloader-shot deer to make it more than 50-60 yards.
I'm guessing that when I say that I'm drawing on 60-70 kills ranging from .45 Colt revolver with 300+ grain bullets at 1100' or so, on up to 300s at 2400'+ or 225s at up to 2600'. Most of those are with smokeless muzzleloaders, of course, but a ton were with 80 grains of Pyrodex back in the day, and a modern 45-70 can easily push those speeds with 300-grain bullets in Marlin or stronger single shot actions.

I will agree that 'hard cast' or heavily jacketed bullets designed for rifles, are poor performers at pistol speeds. The trick, as always, is to match the bullet speed to its construction. A 350-grain 45-70 soft point designed for 2000' will underexpand at 1200' just like a 55 grain 22-250 at 3800' might underpenetrate. To be clear, I'm not advocating for BIG BORE WALLOP here. I am just recognizing that by legal necessity I have to use big bores a lot (because our daylight rut/seeking activity peaks here during MZ season) and they kill stuff quite well.

I wouldn't hesitate to put a hornady .452 250 or 300 XTP through a deer or moose at 1100' to 1400'. And if I could use a Speer Gold Dot I wouldn't hesitate to even drop down to 1000' or possibly even less. Trajectory becomes a problem long before terminal performance does.

(ETA: Also, those Hornady .452/250 XTPs will work very well at even higher speeds. At 1800' or faster they tend to stop making exit wounds, but they still kill very well, and at 2200' they start to resemble modern match bullets that we might shoot at 2500' to 3000' out of smaller bore; nothing will survive a decent hit from one)

 

[ORJoe]

I know, Nothing is impossible. I clearly hit the deer. Hopefully I just grazed it, and it was a bad shot, and the deer lived. I just have a hard time believing that I made that bad of a shot at that distance given how well the rifle has shot on the range. Stranger things have certainly happened, dont get me wrong.

But it left a sour taste in my mouth toward 300blk on a deer. If it had been a giant deer I may have pawned the gun that day.

The first three big game animals I got would have been easy shots on the range, but I still put a warning shot into the dirt behind all three of them because that's how it goes.
The two deer were with a 6.5 Grendel, 123 SSTs, died within 10 feet once I actually hit them.

 

[77TMK]

223 has all the oomph needed for whitetail deer, and then still plenty more.

T3X Lite 16" with durable but inexpensive scope
or go for a light AR15 like a BCM ELW 16" upper on lower of your choice, and a red dot +magnifier will make easy work of anything inside 300 yards while being about 7lb.

 

[Johnwell]

I’d vote howa mini in 6 arc or 6.5 Grendel. You can get a barreled action on brownells and then toss it in a stocky’s carbon stock. If you want it shorter/handier, you can get the jtac elf owl telescopic stock and/or shorten the barrel.

My 20” Grendel took a buck somewhere around 225-250 yards with a 100gr partition last year and seemed effective.

 

[Brandon_SPC]

Howa Mini in a 6mm ARC with a 16.5" barrel and a suppressor has been wonderful for me. Mine is a little "Custom" but you could get a barreled action. Have a gunsmith cut the barrel down and recrown/thread then get a stocky stock CF stock.

 

[minas stiris]

We have a ruger compact in 7-08 for kids when they were smaller. Kills elk just fine with 120 barnes. 18" barrel, put it in an adjustable magpul stock. Factory magazines suck but pmags work great with new stock. Just a different option.