Lowell, you don't need to go back to Missouri's old regs to see poor judgement in prescribing adequate calibers for game. Arizona for example has no requirement on elk cartridges other than center fire rifle,centerfire pistol, muzzleloading rifle or shotgun firing slugs (no minimum caliber for any of these). I expect to find some fool hunting bull elk with .22 Hornet. I have seen several trying it with .223 Rem and the 7.62x39 and sadly reporting multiple attempts with no elk recovered. Of course they killed the animal, just not within their tracking ability. A lot of that sort of poor regulation is economics in the game department's interest. They need license fees to meet the payroll so anything they perceive might reduce the number of applicants putting down license and tag fees is hard to get in the regulations.
