I dont hunt with an M-4, I dont hunt with a 14 inch barrel, I also use expanding bullets. I know what I and my weapon are capable of. There is no point to this argument, if you really think that any animal can function after being shot with a 22 caliber centerfire bullet in a vital organ, you are very wrong. Reading books are great,real life is sometimes much different than the classroom fairy tales. I use several different calibers to hunt deer depending on the situation and enviroment that I will be hunting. If you are not competent with the firearm you hunt with, practice. A bad shot with a 300 win mag is no better than a bad shot with a 223, its a bad shot. As a hunter you owe it to the animal you hunt to be willing to wait for the shot that will be most effective and be able to preform well enough to pull it off.
I meet a half dozen people every year that are hunting with a rifle that in my opinion is way to much gun, they always say the same thing " I bought this.. because I got tired of shooting deer with a 270,30-06,308,30-30, you pick the caliber, and watching them run of and never finding them". It aint the gun friends it the shooter......
"My argument is that most of us should stay away from calibers that require special vigilance to be sure the animal is positioned just right, is within proper range, and that the shot is taken with skill and precision."
I would argue that this should apply to every shot no matter the caliber and that is why most of the people that I have met in my life that carry one of the ever popular belted mags cant perform any better with it than they can a 22lr, usually worse. Be proficient with the weapon you choose, be reasonable in the shots you take. I would be scared to guess the number of hogs that I have killed with a 22-250 and 223,it would be in the hundreds in the last couple years alone, from 25 to almost 400 pounds no deer is as tough to bring down as a hog and these two calibers have performed flawlessly. Proper bullet placement within known limits. Again I would say that no animal can continue to function with its brain scrambled or its heart or lungs burst IT WILL NOT HAPPEN.