As with anything shot placement matters but more so with the smaller stuff. My wife shot a 130lb doe with a 223 at 167 yards lasered dropped it in her tracks. That was with a 52gr serria match king. Shot placement is where it is at. That said if your useing the smaller stuff just be very sure of where you hit them and they well work.

I have and have seen a lot of roo's shot with .223's, 22/250's & .222's large males would weigh more than a whitetail dear and I feel unless head shots are taken there less than desireable.

I've shot a couple of deer with the .223 but my 10 yr old daughter has me beat.....she has 2-does and a nice 8pt to her credit using a .223

Her latest was just last weekend.....an excellent 80yd, double lung shot on a large, mature doe (64gr Power Point)! The doe didn't make it 50 yards before piling up.

With that said....I'm going to upgrade her to at least a .243 or, if she can handle the recoil, I would like to see her pokin' 'em with a 7mm-08 or a downloaded .308

The .223 is really scraping the bottom of the barrel for a deer round (Just My Opinion though) If you can shoot a larger caliber I think it would be wiser.

PC: Your experience on roos is similar to mine on deer. I have recovered everyone I've shot with a 223, but some haven't been easy, expecially because there's no blood trail. Most of the deer I've shot with one have been in the 150-250 lbs. range. I wounded a Muley once with what I thought was a perfect lung shot, after quite a bit of tracking, I managed to finish him off with a head shot. When an autopsy was done, the bullet that should have penetrated the lungs had bounced off a rib and penetrated no vitals(the bullet was perfectly mushroomed). I shot an average doe once that required 4 shots, all of them were through lungs or heart.