I shot a deer with a 308 at about forty yds once, hit him just off center-to the right shoulder (deer facing me), that bullets slipped into the ribs just fine but fragmented into four distinct wound channels, breaking a vertebrae, two ribs, all the viscera to the hip (I think left), and the femur was busted into little chunks (looked like cottage cheese in a bunch of meat) leaving the knee just fine and the ball of the ball and socket fine, no femur though. so I ended up losing a backstrap, hindquarters, and had to really wash that deer out because of all the nasty left inside from busted organs
it's not super-fast, super-heavy or super-easy to shoot (like 22lr)
because it's not specialized for any of those, not at all... but while it doesn't excel in ANY of those criterion
it does perform just fine in all areas too, after five hundred it starts to fall down but it still has the mass and sectional density to "slip-in",
with the weight backing a spitzer to bust a bone still (that bullet just won't expand and explode like my close up shot, what a shame, you might actually get to keep all that meat)
I'm a recoil sensitive sissy, so how someone can't make the most of 308 escapes me (it ain't flinching, that's why I got a 308)