Tough crowd yes. Listening to responses to the question got me to thinking the .223 is not a good option for me...might be fine for someone else but not for me.
I applaud you for requesting information and making a (better) informed decision to meet your personal needs based on the responses you received, in particular because you decided that your original premise to use the caliber was the wrong starting point for you. OUTSTANDING! I am not arguing against the caliber, only that you seem to be using information to make a more appropriate decision.
It seems the best answer is "there are better"
"Better" is often in the eye of the shooter. I certainly think you could go with a number of more powerful or capable calibers that would not cause you significant problems with recoil or overall gun weight.
In the grand scheme, the smaller and less powerful calibers work better with more precise shooting and bullets that perform at the optimal best at the anticipated impact velocities (best performance being what you want the bullet to be doing). Larger, more powerful calibers allow more room for error. For example, a marginal shot by a smaller, less powerful caliber that does a nominal amount of tissue damage is theoretically will be less effective than a shot in the same place by a larger, more powerful caliber that does a larger amount of tissue damage. More tissue damage done means a greater likelihood of vital structure involvement or larger volumes of vital structure involvement. If your deer does not drop on the spot, the deer with the greater amount of tissue damage is less apt to travel as far, hence increasing your likelihood for recovery.
A buddy of mine deer hunts in Kansas. Where he hunts, he can shoot a deer and have line of sight on it for upwards of 400 or 500 yards in any direction. Finding a deer that runs 100-200 yards isn't an issue and he has no real concern about blood trails. Where another buddy of mine hunts in Virginia, line of sight may be gone before the deer has traveled 10 yards and so a deer that travels 100-200 yards can literally take hours to find if the blood trail is poor, or may even be lost.
A .223 with full expansion likely will be less than that of a .45/70 with partial expansion or a 12 ga. slug with no expansion, though you can find .45/70 or 12 ga slugs from which you can expect to have full expansion. You can expect all 3 of these to overpenetrate a deer in most cases (which most deer hunters consider to be a good thing for blood trails). Often (not always), the larger the exit wound in a given location, the greater the external blood loss. Of course, with the larger calibers come more recoil and a greater loss of meat. The larger calibers are more apt to punch through heavy bone and continue through the body than smaller calibers.
I am not suggesting you NEED either of these larger calibers, but am just using them as examples, though people do hunt deer with those calibers as well.
Berger has a line of bullets designed to NOT overpenetrate, but instead to fragment and expend and expend all their energy inside the chest cavity. I don't think 'energy' is nearly as important as the damage done with all the fragmentation going into the cardio pulmonary systems, even CNS (spine), but that is their claim. You are trading penetration potential for increased wound channel size potential. The downside is a lack of an exit wound blood trail, but supposedly the animals are apt to go down faster.
So the bottom line is that every caliber is a compromise and you need to find what works best for you and your situation and with that the right bullet or bullets that do what you want them to do.
My suggestion to you at this time (of shortages) is to NOT choose anything outside of the realm of more popular calibers. I am a 6.5 Grendel shooter and finding that caliber is darned near impossible. I think it is a very capable caliber, but may be worthless to you if you can't find ammo. So, stick with the more common/traditional calibers such a .223, .243, , .270 .30-30, .308, .30-06, .45-70, etc. ...calibers with a long history and of use that remain COMMON today.