I like a grenade in the boiler room or the wheel house. 5 to 25 years ago, in the Dark Ages of my casting career using 1950 fps and slower bullets, I had far too many pierced deer trot off like nothing happened or bolt for 2-300 yards in the brush and make a number of 90° turns along the way before falling over. As far as I'm concerned a .277 bullet can't expand too much. However, there is a better balance but you'd better not just test your hunting bullets and you'd better test them at different ranges so you know what they will and will not do for you.
I don't deer hunt much, am kind of losing my taste for whitetail and had much rather go after feral pigs. The last deer I killed was a small red stag and on that trip I was all ready for "big game" with my Marlin .35 Remington and some hot loads with the Lee 200 bullet and a nice medium alloy engineered for a heart shot. When an afternoon of stalking and belly-crawling finally resulted in a shot opportunity, I ended up opting for between-the-eyes at the last second because that was going to be the only shot I had before he spooked. I was afraid he'd just fainted from the noise when I walked up, not a drop of blood anywhere, just a slight displaced tuft of hair on the upper nose bridge and a .35-caliber hole on the right rear of his head that I had to look really hard to find. The bullet should have still been going 2000 fps at impact, went through a lot of thin bone, and had quite a meplat but it just drilled a hole. So, you never know what will happen. A good brain shot is a pretty sure thing with any caliber and bullet, though.