morning, an a little biased on this but have gone through the same as you
I similarly ditched my .243 as a "one gun roe and fox rifle" the .222 works a treat
Was nervous as hell with my first .222 roe as people had said...
"oh they pencil if you dont get the bullet right",
"they don't penetrate if you hit bone",
"oh they always run",
"oh they don't have enough energy for roe unless its short range"
and the classic....."it's not a humane choice"
Having slotted numerous foxes my first shot at roe with it was off a pair of borrowed limulus sticks at a young spikey cull buck at around 140 yds. witnessed by PKL on here
It took three steps and dropped.
Bullet went in exactly where planned, missed both shoulders, entered just behind the elbow, straight through, entry and exit of around 5 and 20p size
huge destruction internally, massive blood loss.
Very happy chappy.
I have since taken roe with body shots between 30yds and 185yds. (that one was a little further away than I thought!)
Only one neck shot to date, all the rest chest, avoiding spine and shoulder if possible, I don't aim for heart or spine as the buggers up the meat.
Of the 40 odd deer with this calibre I have genuinely never had a deer run, the one above is the one that got the furthest
all the rest drop...straight down!
its hand of God material!
can't explain it
Desperately trying to get a video of this but so far I have run out of battery 5 secs before pulling trigger, forgot the SD card, forgot the camera, didn't have time to turn it on before the shot...... will get one eventually
I use 60gr Hornady Soft points as I managed to get them to stabilise and they give much better downrange energy than 50-55gr
heavy for calibre bullets in .222
zeroed bang on at 100yds with 52gr Amax my rifle is 1" high with 60gr SP's - can't get better than that ( I was +1 and +2" until recently
I get a effective zero of 175yds and am good for point and shoot to 230yds (250yds is 4.5", -300yds is -10")
The .222 can be reloaded to produce accurate ammo with a hammer and a spoon it is that simple
even the crappy loads were around an 1"-1.5" off sticks!
only trying to push heavy for calibre bullets faster than needed did I get larger groups
I use CCI400's and N133 as they are easy to get hold of.
It is without doubt my favourite calibre by far.