After a good working over on a 23 .40 S&W I have been looking for loads for deer. Granted these will be small bodied TN deer at 30 yards or less. Not that hard to kill. The 180gr gold Dot looks like it is up to the job. When I do my part it will stay in 2.5" at 25 yards offhand. Going to test penetration and expansion this week.

I've taken around a dozen deer with a .40. Tried about every bullet I could find. 180s are going a little slow and don't expand well. 155s do fairly good, but have to resight your gun-won't shoot close to the heavy stuff.
The bullet that worked the best and is the only deer bullet I use in my .40 is the 165 gr. Sierra JHC. Accurate, great penetration, and very good damage.
The first few deer I took with my .40 was with 180 gr. Gold Dots and XTPs Took 3 to 4 shot/deer with good placement.
Last 4 or 5 deer 165 Sierra-1 shot! My experimenting has stopped.

Very interesting. I have an optic sight I can pop on it that allows me to re-sight in very quickly. I will give them a whirl.

With a 4" KKM barrel in my G23 I was able to run 180gr XTP's to right around 1200 fps (Longshot) and 200gr WFNGC to just over 1150 fps (800-X). With the stock G23 barrel Power Pistol does well and it's super consistent, 7.2gr with a 180gr Gold Dot was giving me around 1070 fps and 7.0gr with a 200gr Nosler was giving me 1040 fps.

I thought about sticking a Storm Lake barrel in this one. Would love to have the fully supported chamber but it shoots great with the factory barrel.

I been playing with the Cutting Edge Raptors for quite some time, their PHD ammo is loaded to standard pressure, I just took a good sized hog with the 150's in 45 ACP.

The .40 ammo is loaded with the 120 Raptor its an impressive bullet, would make a mess out of those southern whitetails

I ordered a barrel last night. The .40 can easily make 650 to 700 ftlbs with a supported chamber barrel. makes a light packing gun with enough punch to do something.

The hog you killed was maybe 100 pounds at most and no exit on a sow. How can you conclude what a 120 grain 40 cal bullet would do to a deer? Your bullet didn't exit the smallish sow.