One thing is for sure that people that havent been right into the nitty gritty side of s/stag hunting often dont realise how heavily muscled a big stag is from walking through heavily forested super steep mountain country all their lives...and muscle means hardness of an extroadinary type which often does not seem to show up in other deer species although they too live in mountainous areas,these deer are hard to hunt and extra hard in the body muscle as well and i can certainly see the need for a min cal although many were shot with 30 cal m1 carbines in the early days of hound hunting with generally an enormous dose of lead from a 20 round magazine,one fella here shot an enormous amount with a 243 but i suspect that many were hit and then bailed by the hounds to enable a kill shot to be placed.I tend to think myself that some of the rounds talked about here could be on the marginal side of things in the hands of a less experienced hunter and by that i mean the type of person that simply hasnt seen enough deer in his sights to not go to water and lose everything that he has learnt when confronted suddenly by a "good one".
So many hunters simply put themselves into an almost panic situation and freak out and thus can place a marginal bullet in a not so good area..ie a lesser round in the shoulder muscle resulting in not so good penetration as compared to behind the shoulder which would mean a certain kill.Its hard to beat a 270,`06,7mm etc for ease of handling/recoil etc as all round sambar rifles for anyone stepping into hunting first up rather than going into the much talked about heavier 338`s375`s etc which i believe result in much game lost due to new hunters being a little shy of them.