njc,
many will argue that shot placement is more important than caliber, all well and good but fact is that many miss and many others wound. We all know a bad shot on a rabbit with a 22lr and the rabbit runs, same placement with a 223 (same bullet weight and caliber) and the rabbit is down. Similar is with deer shooting to a small degree. Even if the shotplacement is maybe off by an inch or two we hope the blood loss or shock will still hopefully lead to a quick death.
Game, cartridge, speed, bullet choice and shotplacement should be chosen to work together. We should aim to get a big part of the energy of our bullet into the animal. Not on the surface but where it counts.
One of my favourite examples is the use of very tough heavy bullets in the slowish 6.5 swede which was resposible for many a runner here, why? For example a 156 lapua mega (they sell that a lot around here) running very slow out of a 22" sporter can penetrate at least 20" of flesh which means a side on shot sika hind or roe might only receive somewhere around 500ftlb energy. One would be way better off using a 223 and getting 1000ftlb energy into the animal. In this case the main problem is not the cartridge but the bullet choice.
For some it does not matter if a deer runs a bit after the shot, we sometime shoot places where we prefer to get them down with less running. If one is close to roads, close to a forest that one does not have permission to go into or when we shoot on the borders of a farm.
Especially when the neighbour is some tree hugger.
Since a few years I'm happy to use a 308 with 165SST's for stags, running at about 2700fps and 155gr a-max at the same speed for hinds and calfs. I avoid shoulder shots. Overall meat damage is not too bad.
Tomorrow morning I'll use a 243 because my 308 is getting new mounts, not really happy but mainly after a spike.
My friends use 25-06, 270, 270wsm, 3006, the 6.5 and 22-250.
Maybe the best compromise for our deer would be the 7-08, almost too sensible.
edi