Unpopular Opinion

What, in your mind, are optimal weapons for hunting?

How do they differ from an AR 15?

I have tried to spell this out in more detail, but let me say it more plainly:

There are many hunting scenarios where a 5.56 or .223 is optimal.

I ... don't know why you think this is not the case, or maybe I am misunderstanding you and you have some other set of criteria, or are saying something else?

Yeah and you're less likely to hit those vitals with a smaller faster round. Yes if you're a very good shot then you can hit them but with smaller rounds you're more likely to miss them, wound the animal and then have to track it down, further then if you hit vitals, to get another shot at them.

Ok so, with respect, you seem to fundamentally not understand how bullets work when they hit things.

Roughly, Kinetic Energy = 1/2 (mass * velocity^2)

When a bullet impacts flesh, as it travels through the target, it creates what is called a hydrostatic shockwave, or shockfront, or shockcavity, inside of the body.

A high powered, high velocity bullet does far, far more damage than simply drilling out exactly what it plows through.

https://brassfetcher.com/Wounding%20Theories/Velocity%20of%20Radial%20Expansion.html

You can go into a lot more detail by reading all of that if you like, but to summarize:

A .22lr and .223 / 5.56 are roughly the same diameter of bullet.

But a 5.56 has an average muzzle velocity of roughly 3000 feet per second, while a .22lr has an average muzzle velocity of about 1000 feet per second.

So, the masses of these two rounds are not too much different, but the velocity is 3x higher, and the velocity component is squared, when determining kinetic energy.

What that means is that a high velocity round creates a huge temporary cavitation within a target, many, many times wider than the bullet itself.

A low velocity round behaves more like the way you are thinking, where basically the bullet only damages tissue that it directly passes through.

So, put those two things together, and what you end up with is that a rifle round, such as .223 or 5.56... you don't need to have the bullet directly pass through all the vital organs.

If you get anywhere close to them, they'll get shredded, ripped apart, cause massive internal bleeding anywhere that internal shock cavity fucks up.

When you see a gruesome, gaping exit wound, what that is is the shock cavity opening up and exiting the body.

For that reason no hunting guide is going to recommend using 5.56 on anything bigger then a raccon. They're fine for smaller game but don't offer much advantage over a .22.

See, hopefully you now understand why this is incredibly innacurate.

A .22lr into a Raccoon is ... sure, we'll call that reasonable for killing a Raccoon, at say, 50 feet.

... a 5.56 into a Raccoon at 50 feet would literally blow off huge chunks of its body, could potentially just actually blow it apart into multiple seperate pieces.

Because a 5.56 carries roughly 9x the amount of energy as a .22lr.

You can go look up how you are also just factually wrong, if you prefer, as to what kinds of animals are legal to hunt with .223.

They include coyote, white tail deer, pronghorns, and feral hogs.

EDIT

As an aside... the hydrostatic shock effect is the actual reason why shooting fish in a barrel is so easy.

You don't have to hit the fish with the bullet to kill them.

The hydrostatic shock of the water trying to get out of the way of the bullet kills the fish in a similar manner as the pressure wave from a bomb kills a person.